t?"

"To trust me a little farther than you did."

"I've told you that yesterday I wasn't free to speak."

"Well, since you are now, may I say a word to you?"

She paused perceptibly, and when she spoke it was in so low a tone that
he had to bend his head to catch her answer. "I can't think what you can
have to say."

"It's not easy to say here, at any rate. And indoors I sha'n't know
where to say it." He glanced about him in the rain. "Let's walk over to
the spring-house for a minute."

To the right of the drive, under a clump of trees, a little stucco
pavilion crowned by a balustrade rose on arches of mouldering brick over
a flight of steps that led down to a spring. Other steps curved up to a
door above. Darrow mounted these, and opening the door entered a
small circular room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon
spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures. Some black and
gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady table of cracked lacquer
stood on the floor of red-glazed tile.

Sophy had followed him without comment. He closed the door after her,
and she stood motionless, as though waiting for him to speak.

"Now we can talk quietly," he said, looking at her with a smile into
which he tried to put an intention of the frankest friendliness.

She merely repeated: "I can't think what you can have to say."

Her voice had lost the note of half-wistful confidence on which their
talk of the previous day had closed, and she looked at him with a kind
of pale hostility. Her tone made it evident that his task would be
difficult, but it did not shake his resolve to go on. He sat down, and
mechanically she followed his example. The table was between them and
she rested her arms on its cracked edge and her chin on her interlocked
hands. He looked at her and she gave him back his look.

"Have you nothing to say to ME?" he asked at length.

A faint smile lifted, in the remembered way, the left corner of her
narrowed lips.

"About my marriage?"

"About your marriage."

She continued to consider him between half-drawn lids. "What can I say
that Mrs. Leath has not already told you?"

"Mrs. Leath has told me nothing whatever but the fact--and her pleasure
in it."

"Well; aren't those the two essential points?"

"The essential points to YOU? I should have thought----"

"Oh, to YOU, I meant," she put in keenly.

He flushed at the retort, but steadied himself and rejoined: "The
essential