ed.

"Yes, yes, yes." But she broke off. "Come to Lady Wells."

He never budged--there was too much else. "I'm to propose it
then--marriage--on the spot?"

There was no ironic sound he needed to give it; the more simply he
spoke the more he seemed ironic. But she remained consummately proof.
"Oh I can't go into that with you, and from the moment you don't wash
your hands of me I don't think you ought to ask me. You must act as you
like and as you can."

He thought again. "I'm far--as I sufficiently showed you this
morning--from washing my hands of you."

"Then," said Kate, "it's all right."

"All right?" His eagerness flamed. "You'll come?"

But he had had to see in a moment that it wasn't what she meant.
"You'll have a free hand, a clear field, a chance--well, quite ideal."

"Your descriptions"--her "ideal" was such a touch!--"are prodigious.
And what I don't make out is how, caring for me, you can like it."

"I don't like it, but I'm a person, thank goodness, who can do what I
don't like."

It wasn't till afterwards that, going back to it, he was to read into
this speech a kind of heroic ring, a note of character that belittled
his own incapacity for action. Yet he saw indeed even at the time the
greatness of knowing so well what one wanted. At the time too,
moreover, he next reflected that he after all knew what _he_ did. But
something else on his lips was uppermost. "What I don't make out then
is how you can even bear it."

"Well, when you know me better you'll find out how much I can bear."
And she went on before he could take up, as it were, her too many
implications. That it was left to him to know her, spiritually,
"better" after his long sacrifice to knowledge--this for instance was a
truth he hadn't been ready to receive so full in the face. She had
mystified him enough, heaven knew, but that was rather by his own
generosity than by hers. And what, with it, did she seem to suggest she
might incur at his hands? In spite of these questions she was carrying
him on. "All you'll have to do will be to stay."

"And proceed to my business under your eyes?"

"Oh dear no--we shall go."

"'Go?'" he wondered. "Go when, go where?"

"In a day or two--straight home. Aunt Maud wishes it now."

It gave him all he could take in to think of. "Then what becomes of
Miss Theale?"

"What I tell you. She stays on, and you stay with her."

He stared. "All alone?"

She had a smile that was apparently for his to