aps," she quickly added,
"you won't want to keep seeing me."

He had it all ready; he had really everything all ready. "I shall
follow you up; though if you mean that I don't want you to keep seeing
_me_----"

"Well?" she asked.

It was only just here that he struck her the least bit as stumbling.
"Well, see all you can. That's what it comes to. Worry about nothing.
You _have_ at least no worries. It's a great, rare chance."

She had got up, for she had had from him both that he would send her
something and would advise her promptly of the date of his coming to
her, by which she was virtually dismissed. Yet, for herself, one or two
things kept her. "May I come back to England too?"

"Rather! Whenever you like. But always, when you do come, immediately
let me know."

"Ah," said Milly, "it won't be a great going to and fro."

"Then if you'll stay with us, so much the better."

It touched her, the way he controlled his impatience of her; and the
fact itself affected her as so precious that she yielded to the wish to
get more from it. "So you don't think I'm out of my mind?"

"Perhaps that _is,"_ he smiled, "all that's the matter."

She looked at him longer. "No, that's too good. Shall I, at any rate,
suffer?"

"Not a bit."

"And yet then live?"

"My dear young lady," said her distinguished friend, "isn't to 'live'
exactly what I'm trying to persuade you to take the trouble to do?"

XIII

She had gone out with these last words so in her ears that when once
she was well away--back this time in the great square alone--it was as
if some instant application of them had opened out there before her. It
was positively, this effect, an excitement that carried her on; she
went forward into space under the sense of an impulse received--an
impulse simple and direct, easy above all to act upon. She was borne up
for the hour, and now she knew why she had wanted to come by herself.
No one in the world could have sufficiently entered into her state; no
tie would have been close enough to enable a companion to walk beside
her without some disparity. She literally felt, in this first flush,
that her only company must be the human race at large, present all
round her, but inspiringly impersonal, and that her only field must be,
then and there, the grey immensity of London. Grey immensity had
somehow of a sudden become her element; grey immensity was what her
distinguished friend had, for the moment, furnished her world