little thrill of elation, 'Ah, then
it's _her_ way too!' I wonder if you'll let me tell you," I floundered
pleasantly on, "that I immediately liked you the better for it. It
seemed to bring us more together. That's what I sat straight down here
to show you. 'Yes,' I wished you to understand me as frankly saying, 'I
_am_, as well as you, on the mope, or on the muse, or on whatever you
call it, and this isn't half a bad corner for such a mood.' I can't tell
you what a pleasure it is to me to see you do understand."

I kept it up, as I say, to reassure and soothe and steady her; there was
nothing, however fantastic and born of the pressure of the moment, that
I wouldn't have risked for that purpose. She was absolutely on my hands
with her secret--I felt that from the way she stood and listened to me,
silently showing herself relieved and pacified. It was marked that if I
had hitherto seen her as "all over the place," she had yet nowhere
seemed to me less so than at this furthermost point. But if, though only
nearer to her secret and still not in possession, I felt as justified as
I have already described myself, so it equally came to me that I was
quite near enough, at the pass we had reached, for what I should have to
take from it all. She was on my hands--it was she herself, poor
creature, who was: this was the thing that just now loomed large, and
the secret was a comparative detail. "I think you're very kind," she
said for all answer to the speech I have reported, and the minute after
this she had sunk down, in confessed collapse, to my bench, on which she
sat and stared before her. The mere mechanism of her expression, the
dangling paper lantern itself, was now all that was left in her face.
She remained a little as if discouraged by the sight of the weariness
that her surrender had let out. I hesitated, from just this fear of
adding to it, to commiserate her for it more directly, and she spoke
again before I had found anything to say. She brought back her attention
indeed as if with an effort and from a distance. "What is it that has
happened to you?"

"Oh," I laughed, "what is it that has happened to _you_?" My question
had not been in the least intended for pressure, but it made her turn
and look at me, and this, I quickly recognised, was all the answer the
most pitiless curiosity could have desired--all the more, as well, that
the intention in it had been no greater than in my words. Beautiful,
abysmal, involunt