hy I feel so sure of it. If it had been just me, I
should never have been sure a minute. It might have gone any day,
and I should have known that there was no more where it came from.
But, if it's you, I can simply lean back on it and rest. Don't you
see?"

"No," he said, "I don't see."

(He was saying to himself: "I'm afraid Julia was right about her.
Only she doesn't know it.")

"You must leave me out of it. You mustn't let yourself think that
you rest on anything or anybody but yourself."

It was what Julia had said, searching her with her woman's eyes. He
did not look at her as he said it.

Her nerves still shook under Julia's distant and delicate admonition
to her to keep her head. It struck her that he was repeating the
warning in a still more delicate and distant manner. She wondered
was it possible that he was beginning to be afraid? Couldn't he see
that he was safe with her? That they were safe with one another?
What was she doing now but letting him see how safe they were?
Hadn't she just given to their relations the last touch of spiritual
completion? She had made a place for him where he could come and go
at will, and rest without terror. Couldn't he see that she had set
her house of life above all that, so high that nobody down here
could see what went on up there, and wonder at his going out and
coming in?

Keep her head, indeed! Her untroubled and untrammeled movements on
her heights proved how admirably she kept it.

"You see," he continued, "it's not as if I could be always here, on
the spot."

His voice still sounded the distant note of warning. It told her
that there was something that he wished to make _her_ see.

Her best answer to that was silence, and a sincere front intimating
that she saw everything, and that there was nothing to touch her in
the things _he_ saw.

"And as it happens" (Caldecott's voice shook a little), "I'm going
away next week. I shall be away a very long time."

She knew that he did not look at her now lest he should see her
wince. She did not wince.

"Well," said she, "I shall be here when you come back."

It was then that she saw the terror in his face.

"Of course," he said, "I hope--very much--you will be here."

She felt that he, like Julia, was leading her to the edge of the
deep dividing place, and that he paused miserably where Julia had
plunged. She saw him trying to bridge the gulf, to cover it, with
decent, gentle commonplaces and courtesies. Th