why i read henry james

"it was impossible that he shouldn't now and again meet charlotte's eyes, as it was also visible that she now and again met her husband's. for her as well, in all his pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. it put them, it kept them together, through the vain show of their separation; made the two other faces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the flowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge between them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for that intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of 'care,' would be never rashly to forget and never consciously to wound."

"and so for a minute they stood together as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. they were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met."