ntioning my name, for permission to call; that is _I_ pictured it,
having more material than my companion, whom I felt hang on my lips as
we stopped on purpose before shop-windows we didn't look into. About one
thing we were clear: if he was staying on for fuller communication we
should at least have a letter from him that would help us through the
dregs of delay. We understood his staying on, and yet each of us saw, I
think, that the other hated it. The letter we were clear about arrived;
it was for Gwendolen, and I called upon her in time to save her the
trouble of bringing it to me. She didn't read it out, as was natural
enough; but she repeated to me what it chiefly embodied. This consisted
of the remarkable statement that he would tell her when they were
married exactly what she wanted to know.

"Only when we're married--not before," she explained. "It's tantamount
to saying--isn't it?--that I must marry him straight off!" She smiled
at me while I flushed with disappointment, a vision of fresh delay that
made me at first unconscious of my surprise. It seemed more than a hint
that on me as well he would impose some tiresome condition. Suddenly,
while she reported several more things from his letter, I remembered
what he had told me before going away. He found Mr. Vereker deliriously
interesting and his own possession of the secret a kind of intoxication.
The buried treasure was all gold and gems. Now that it was there it
seemed to grow and grow before him; it was in all time, in all tongues,
one of the most wonderful flowers of art. Nothing, above all, when once
one was face to face with it, had been more consummately done. When
once it came out it came out, was there with a splendour that made you
ashamed; and there had not been, save in the bottomless vulgarity of
the age, with every one tasteless and tainted, every sense stopped, the
smallest reason why it should have been overlooked. It was immense,
but it was simple--it was simple, but it was immense, and the final
knowledge of it was an experience quite apart. He intimated that the
charm of such an experience, the desire to drain it, in its freshness,
to the last drop, was what kept him there close to the source.
Gwendolen, frankly radiant as she tossed me these fragments, showed the
elation of a prospect more assured than my own. That brought me back to
the question of her marriage, prompted me to ask her if what she
meant by what she had just surprised me wit