Well, he wished it were; and the consummation depended for
him clearly more and more on his friend.
But she had now a soft smile. "Oh far--!"
It was oddly ironic. "Do you mean you're prepared to go further?"
She was frail and ancient and charming as she continued to look at
him, yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread. "Do you
consider that we went far?"
"Why I thought it the point you were just making--that we HAD
looked most things in the face."
"Including each other?" She still smiled. "But you're quite
right. We've had together great imaginations, often great fears;
but some of them have been unspoken."
"Then the worst--we haven't faced that. I COULD face it, I
believe, if I knew what you think it. I feel," he explained, "as
if I had lost my power to conceive such things." And he wondered
if he looked as blank as he sounded. "It's spent."
"Then why do you assume," she asked, "that mine isn't?"
"Because you've given me signs to the contrary. It isn't a
question for you of conceiving, imagining, comparing. It isn't a
question now of choosing.
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