Was it--or rather wasn't it--that if for so
long she had been watching with him the answer to their question
must have swum into her ken and taken on its name, so that her
occupation was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with
this in saying to her, many months before, that she even then knew
something she was keeping from him. It was a point he had never
since ventured to press, vaguely fearing as he did that it might
become a difference, perhaps a disagreement, between them. He had
in this later time turned nervous, which was what he in all the
other years had never been; and the oddity was that his nervousness
should have waited till he had begun to doubt, should have held off
so long as he was sure. There was something, it seemed to him,
that the wrong word would bring down on his head, something that
would so at least ease off his tension. But he wanted not to speak
the wrong word; that would make everything ugly. He wanted the
knowledge he lacked to drop on him, if drop it could, by its own
august weight. If she was to forsake him it was surely for her to
take leave.
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