This was why he didn't directly ask her again what she
knew; but it was also why, approaching the matter from another
side, he said to her in the course of his visit: "What do you
regard as the very worst that at this time of day CAN happen to
me?"
He had asked her that in the past often enough; they had, with the
odd irregular rhythm of their intensities and avoidances, exchanged
ideas about it and then had seen the ideas washed away by cool
intervals, washed like figures traced in sea-sand. It had ever
been the mark of their talk that the oldest allusions in it
required but a little dismissal and reaction to come out again,
sounding for the hour as new. She could thus at present meet his
enquiry quite freshly and patiently. "Oh yes, I've repeatedly
thought, only it always seemed to me of old that I couldn't quite
make up my mind. I thought of dreadful things, between which it
was difficult to choose; and so must you have done."
"Rather! I feel now as if I had scarce done anything else. I
appear to myself to have spent my life in thinking of nothing but
dreadful things.
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