f rather as getting it out of her piece by piece
than as receiving it in a steady light. He had always felt, however,
that the more he asked of her the more he found her prepared, as he
imaged it, to hand out. He had said to her more than once even before
his absence: "You keep the key of the cupboard, and I foresee that when
we're married you'll dole me out my sugar by lumps." She had replied
that she rejoiced in his assumption that sugar would be his diet, and
the domestic arrangement so prefigured might have seemed already to
prevail. The supply from the cupboard at this hour was doubtless, of a
truth, not altogether cloyingly sweet; but it met in a manner his
immediate requirements. If her explanations at any rate prompted
questions the questions no more exhausted them than they exhausted her
patience. And they were naturally, of the series, the simpler; as for
instance in his taking it from her that Miss Theale then could do
nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think
possible. "If we can't meet here and we've really exhausted the charms
of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some
occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me
these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so
accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And
it's one more nail, thank God, in the coffin of our odious delay." He
was but too glad without more ado to point the moral. "Now I hope you
see we can't work it anyhow."

If she laughed for this--and her spirits seemed really high--it was
because of the opportunity that, at the hotel, he had most shown
himself as enjoying. "Your idea's beautiful when one remembers that you
hadn't a word except for Milly." But she was as beautifully
good-humoured. "You might of course get used to her--you _will._ You're
quite right--so long as they're with us or near us." And she put it,
lucidly, that the dear things couldn't _help_, simply as charming
friends, giving them a lift. "They'll speak to Aunt Maud, but they
won't shut their doors to us: that would be another matter. A friend
always helps--and she's a friend." She had left Mrs. Stringham by this
time out of the question; she had reduced it to Milly. "Besides, she
particularly likes us. She particularly likes _you_. I say, old boy,
make something of that." He felt her dodging the ultimatum he had just
made sharp, his definite reminder of how litt