o----'

'No, of course not.'

She had no desire to discuss the tedious affair, because she was
infallibly certain of his entire sympathy. Explanations on her side, and
assurances on his, were equally superfluous.

'But won't you come into the house?' She invited him as a sort of
afterthought.

'Why?' he demanded bluntly.

She hesitated before replying: 'It will look so queer, us staying here
like this.' As soon as she had uttered the words she suspected that she
had said something decisive and irretrievable.

He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and walked several
times to and fro a few paces. Then he stopped in front of her.

'I guess we are bound to look queer, you and I, some day. So it may as
well be now,' he said.

It was in this exchange of sentences that their mutual passion became at
length articulate. A single discreet word spoken quickly, and she might
even yet perhaps have withdrawn from the situation. But she did not
speak; she could not speak; and soon she knew that her own silence had
bound her. She yielded herself with poignant and magnificent joy to the
profound drama which had been magically created by this apparently
commonplace dialogue. The climax had been achieved, and she was
conscious of being lifted into a sublime exultation, and of being cut
off from all else in the world save him. She looked at him intently with
a sadness that was the cloak of celestial rapture. 'How courageous you
are!' her soft eyes said. 'I should never have dared. What a _man_!' It
seemed to her that her heart would break under the strain of that
ecstasy. She had not imagined the possibility of such bliss.

'Listen!' he proceeded. 'I ought to be in New York--I oughtn't to be
here. I must tell you. Scarcely a fortnight ago, one afternoon while I
was working in my office in Fourteenth Street, I had a feeling I would
be bound to come over. I said to myself the idea was preposterous. But
the next thing I knew I was arranging to come. I couldn't believe I was
coming. Not even when I had booked my berth and boarded the steamer, not
even when the steamer was actually passing Sandy Hook, could I believe
that I was really coming. I said to myself I was mad. I said to myself
that no man in his senses could behave as I was behaving. And when I got
to Southampton I said I would go right back. And yet I couldn't help
getting into the special for London. And when I got to London I said I
would act sensible and go