"
Well, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a
decision to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal,
though still, with a small fine inner stiffness, an imperfect
surrender. "It WOULD be the worst," she finally let herself say.
"I mean the thing I've never said."
It hushed him a moment. "More monstrous than all the monstrosities
we've named?"
"More monstrous. Isn't that what you sufficiently express," she
asked, "in calling it the worst?"
Marcher thought. "Assuredly--if you mean, as I do, something that
includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable."
"It would if it SHOULD happen," said May Bartram. "What we're
speaking of, remember, is only my idea."
"It's your belief," Marcher returned. "That's enough for me. I
feel your beliefs are right. Therefore if, having this one, you
give me no more light on it, you abandon me."
"No, no!" she repeated. "I'm with you--don't you see?--still."
And as to make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair--a
movement she seldom risked in these days--and showed herself, all
draped and all soft, in her fairness and slimness.
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