"Do you ask that, by any chance, because
you feel at all that yours isn't? I mean because you have to wait
so long."
Oh he understood what she meant! "For the thing to happen that
never does happen? For the Beast to jump out? No, I'm just where
I was about it. It isn't a matter as to which I can CHOOSE, I can
decide for a change. It isn't one as to which there CAN be a
change. It's in the lap of the gods. One's in the hands of one's
law--there one is. As to the form the law will take, the way it
will operate, that's its own affair."
"Yes," Miss Bartram replied; "of course one's fate's coming, of
course it HAS come in its own form and its own way, all the while.
Only, you know, the form and the way in your case were to have
been--well, something so exceptional and, as one may say, so
particularly YOUR own."
Something in this made him look at her with suspicion. "You say
'were to HAVE been,' as if in your heart you had begun to doubt."
"Oh!" she vaguely protested.
"As if you believed," he went on, "that nothing will now take
place."
She shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably.
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