You've touches,
upon my soul--!"

"I call it perfect--from my original point of view. I'm just where I
was; and you must give me some better reason than you do, my dear, for
_your_ not being. It seems to me," she continued, "that we're only
right as to what has been between us so long as we do wait. I don't
think we wish to have behaved like fools." He took in while she talked
her imperturbable consistency; which it was quietly, queerly hopeless
to see her stand there and breathe into their mild remembering air. He
had brought her there to be moved, and she was only immoveable--which
was not moreover, either, because she didn't understand. She understood
everything, and things he refused to; and she had reasons, deep down,
the sense of which nearly sickened him. She had too again most of all
her strange significant smile. "Of course if it's that you really
_know_ something--?" It was quite conceivable and possible to her, he
could see, that he did. But he didn't even know what she meant, and he
only looked at her in gloom. His gloom however didn't upset her. "You
do, I believe, only you've a delicacy about saying it. Your delicacy to
me, my dear, is a scruple too much. I should have no delicacy in
hearing it, so that if you can _tell_ me you know--"

"Well?" he asked as she still kept what depended on it.

"Why then I'll do what you want. We needn't, I grant you, in that case
wait; and I can see what you mean by thinking it nicer of us not to. I
don't even ask you," she continued, "for a proof. I'm content with your
moral certainty."

By this time it had come over him--it had the force of a rush. The
point she made was clear, as clear as that the blood, while he
recognised it, mantled in his face. "I know nothing whatever."

"You've not an idea?"

"I've not an idea."

"I'd consent," she said--"I'd announce it to-morrow, to-day, I'd go
home this moment and announce it to Aunt Maud, for an idea: I mean an
idea straight _from_ you, I mean as your own, given me in good faith.
There, my dear!"--and she smiled again. "I call that really meeting
you."

If it _was_ then what she called it, it disposed of his appeal, and he
could but stand there with his wasted passion--for it was in high
passion that he had from the morning acted--in his face. She made it
all out, bent upon her--the idea he didn't have, and the idea he had,
and his failure of insistence when it brought up _that_ challenge, and
his sense of her person