ently
became conscious of having decided. If he had been drifting it settled
itself in the manner of a bump, of considerable violence, against a
firm object in the stream. "Oh yes; I'll go with you with pleasure.
It's a charming idea."

She gave no look to thank him--she rather looked away; she only said at
once to her servant, "In ten minutes"; and then to her visitor, as the
man went out, "We'll go somewhere--I shall like that. But I must ask of
you time--as little as possible--to get ready." She looked over the
room to provide for him, keep him there. "There are books and
things--plenty; and I dress very quickly." He caught her eyes only as
she went, on which he thought them pretty and touching.

Why especially touching at that instant he could certainly scarce have
said; it was involved, it was lost in the sense of her wishing to
oblige him. Clearly what had occurred was her having wished it so that
she had made him simply wish, in civil acknowledgement, to oblige
_her;_ which he had now fully done by turning his corner. He was quite
round it, his corner, by the time the door had closed upon her and he
stood there alone. Alone he remained for three minutes more--remained
with several very living little matters to think about. One of these
was the phenomenon--typical, highly American, he would have said--of
Milly's extreme spontaneity. It was perhaps rather as if he had sought
refuge--refuge from another question--in the almost exclusive
contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him nowhere; not even
to a sound generalisation about American girls. It was spontaneous for
his young friend to have asked him to drive with her alone--since she
hadn't mentioned her companion; but she struck him after all as no more
advanced in doing it than Kate, for instance, who wasn't an American
girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Besides, Kate _would_ have
done it, though Kate wasn't at all, in the same sense as Milly,
spontaneous. And then in addition Kate _had_ done it--or things very
like it. Furthermore he was engaged to Kate--even if his ostensibly not
being put her public freedom on other grounds. On all grounds, at any
rate, the relation between Kate and freedom, between freedom and Kate,
was a different one from any he could associate or cultivate, as to
anything, with the girl who had just left him to prepare to give
herself up to him. It had never struck him before, and he moved about
the room while he thou