"Please
don't then. We're just right as it is."
"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then
you do still feel in the same way?"
It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really
interested, though it all kept coining as a perfect surprise. He
had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he
wasn't alone a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--
since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been,
he seemed to see as he looked at her--she who had been made so by
the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he
had told her--what had it been but to ask something of her?
something that she had given, in her charity, without his having,
by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another
encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had
been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not
done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had
endless gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how
he had figured to her.
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