give me."

She appeared to wonder. "And pray what is it I don't--?"

"I give you proof," said Densher. "You give me none."

"What then do you call proof?" she after a moment ventured to ask.

"Your doing something for me."

She considered with surprise. "Am I not doing _this_ for you? Do you
call this nothing?"

"Nothing at all."

"Ah I risk, my dear, everything for it."

They had strolled slowly further, but he was brought up short. "I
thought you exactly contend that, with your aunt so bamboozled, you
risk nothing!"

It was the first time since the launching of her wonderful idea that he
had seen her at a loss. He judged the next instant moreover that she
didn't like it--either the being so or the being seen, for she soon
spoke with an impatience that showed her as wounded; an appearance that
produced in himself, he no less quickly felt, a sharp pang of
indulgence. "What then do you wish me to risk?"

The appeal from danger touched him, but all to make him, as he would
have said, worse. "What I wish is to be loved. How can I feel at this
rate that I _am_?" Oh she understood him, for all she might so bravely
disguise it, and that made him feel straighter than if she hadn't.
Deep, always, was his sense of life with her--deep as it had been from
the moment of those signs of life that in the dusky London of two
winters ago they had originally exchanged. He had never taken her for
unguarded, ignorant, weak; and if he put to her a claim for some
intenser faith between them this was because he believed it could reach
her and she could meet it. "I can go on perhaps," he said, "with help.
But I can't go on without."

She looked away from him now, and it showed him how she understood. "We
ought to be there--I mean when they come out."

"They _won't_ come out--not yet. And I don't care if they do." To which
he straightway added, as if to deal with the charge of selfishness that
his words, sounding for himself, struck him as enabling her to make:
"Why not have done with it all and face the music as we are?" It broke
from him in perfect sincerity. "Good God, if you'd only _take_ me!"

It brought her eyes round to him again, and he could see how, after
all, somewhere deep within, she felt his rebellion more sweet than
bitter. Its effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold her
an instant. "We've gone too far," she none the less pulled herself
together to reply. "Do you want to kill her?"

He had an hes