ion--her
temporary position--still more clear, and it was for this purpose,
obviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down.
He stood for a little before her, as if to mark the importance of not
wasting time, the importance she herself had previously insisted on; but
after she had said a few words it was impossible for him not to resort
again to good-nature. He marked as he could, by this concession, that if
he had finally met her first proposal for what would be "amusing" in
it, so any idea she might have would contribute to that effect. He
had consequently--in all consistency--to treat it as amusing that she
reaffirmed, and reaffirmed again, the truth that was HER truth.

"I don't care what you make of it, and I don't ask anything whatever of
you--anything but this. I want to have said it--that's all; I want not
to have failed to say it. To see you once and be with you, to be as we
are now and as we used to be, for one small hour--or say for two--that's
what I have had for weeks in my head. I mean, of course, to get it
BEFORE--before what you're going to do. So, all the while, you see," she
went on with her eyes on him, "it was a question for me if I should
be able to manage it in time. If I couldn't have come now I probably
shouldn't have come at all--perhaps even ever. Now that I'm here I shall
stay, but there were moments, over there, when I despaired. It wasn't
easy--there were reasons; but it was either this or nothing. So I didn't
struggle, you see, in vain. AFTER--oh, I didn't want that! I don't
mean," she smiled, "that it wouldn't have been delightful to see you
even then--to see you at any time; but I would never have come for it.
This is different. This is what I wanted. This is what I've got. This is
what I shall always have. This is what I should have missed, of course,"
she pursued, "if you had chosen to make me miss it. If you had thought
me horrid, had refused to come, I should, naturally, have been immensely
'sold.' I had to take the risk. Well, you're all I could have hoped.
That's what I was to have said. I didn't want simply to get my time with
you, but I wanted you to know. I wanted you"--she kept it up, slowly,
softly, with a small tremor of voice, but without the least failure of
sense or sequence--"I wanted you to understand. I wanted you, that is,
to hear. I don't care, I think, whether you understand or not. If I ask
nothing of you I don't--I mayn't--ask even so much as that.