the end of a quarter-of-an-hour--that just this truth of their safety
offered it now a kind of unexampled receptacle, letting it spread and
spread, but at the same time elastically enclosing it, banking it in,
for softness, as with billows of eiderdown. On that morning; in the Park
there had been, however dissimulated, doubt and danger, whereas the tale
this afternoon was taken up with a highly emphasised confidence. The
emphasis, for their general comfort, was what Charlotte had come to
apply; inasmuch as, though it was not what she definitely began with, it
had soon irrepressibly shaped itself. It was the meaning of the question
she had put to him as soon as they were alone--even though indeed, as
from not quite understanding, he had not then directly replied; it was
the meaning of everything else, down to the conscious quaintness of
her ricketty "growler" and the conscious humility of her dress. It had
helped him a little, the question of these eccentricities, to let her
immediate appeal pass without an answer. He could ask her instead what
had become of her carriage and why, above all, she was not using it in
such weather.

"It's just because of the weather," she explained. "It's my little idea.
It makes me feel as I used to--when I could do as I liked."

XVIII

This came out so straight that he saw at once how much truth it
expressed; yet it was truth that still a little puzzled him. "But did
you ever like knocking about in such discomfort?"

"It seems to me now that I then liked everything. It's the charm, at
any rate," she said from her place at the fire, "of trying again the
old feelings. They come back--they come back. Everything," she went on,
"comes back. Besides," she wound up, "you know for yourself."

He stood near her, his hands in his pockets; but not looking at her,
looking hard at the tea-table. "Ah, I haven't your courage. Moreover,"
he laughed, "it seems to me that, so far as that goes, I do live in
hansoms. But you must awfully want your tea," he quickly added; "so let
me give you a good stiff cup."

He busied himself with this care, and she sat down, on his pushing up
a low seat, where she had been standing; so that, while she talked, he
could bring her what she further desired. He moved to and fro before
her, he helped himself; and her visit, as the moments passed, had more
and more the effect of a signal communication that she had come, all
responsibly and de