"You're far from
my thought."
He continued to look at her. "What then is the matter with you?"
"Well," she said after another wait, "the matter with me is simply
that I'm more sure than ever my curiosity, as you call it, will be
but too well repaid."
They were frankly grave now; he had got up from his seat, had
turned once more about the little drawing-room to which, year after
year, he brought his inevitable topic; in which he had, as he might
have said, tasted their intimate community with every sauce, where
every object was as familiar to him as the things of his own house
and the very carpets were worn with his fitful walk very much as
the desks in old counting-houses are worn by the elbows of
generations of clerks. The generations of his nervous moods had
been at work there, and the place was the written history of his
whole middle life. Under the impression of what his friend had
just said he knew himself, for some reason, more aware of these
things; which made him, after a moment, stop again before her. "Is
it possibly that you've grown afraid?"
"Afraid?" He thought, as she repeated the word, that his question
had made her, a little, change colour; so that, lest he should have
touched on a truth, he explained very kindly: "You remember that
that was what you asked ME long ago--that first day at Weatherend.
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