'Oh, I think her idea,' said Kate almost gaily now, 'is that I shall get a great deal.'
He met her with his inimitable amenity. 'But does she give you the items?'
The girl went through the show. 'More or less, I think. But many of them are things I dare say I may take for granted—things women can do for each other and that you wouldn't understand.'
'There's nothing I understand so well, always, as the things I needn't! But what I want to do, you see,' he went on, 'is to put it to your conscience that you've an admirable opportunity; and that it's moreover one for which, after all, damn you, you've really to thank
'I confess I don't see,' Kate observed, 'what my 'conscience' has to do with it.'
'Then, my dear girl, you ought simply to be ashamed of yourself. Do you know what you're a proof of, all you hard, hollow people together?' He put the question with a charming air of sudden spiritual heat. 'Of the deplorably superficial morality of the age. The family sentiment, in our vulgarised, brutalised life, has gone utterly to pot. There was a day when a man like me—by which I mean a parent like me—would have been for a daughter like you a quite distinct value; what's called in the business world, I believe, an 'asset.'' He continued sociably to make it out. 'I'm not talking only of what you might, with the right feeling do
Her hesitation broke into laughter. 'No—I haven't 'settled' anything.'
'But you mean, practically, to let Marian collar it?' They stood there face to face, but she so denied herself to his challenge that he could only go on. 'You've a view of three hundred a year for her in addition to what her husband left her with? Is
Kate found her answer without trouble. 'Is it your idea that I should give you everything?'
The 'everything' clearly struck him—to the point even of determining the tone of his reply. 'Far from it. How can you ask that when I refuse what you tell me you came to offer? Make of my idea what you can; I think I've sufficiently expressed it, and it's at any rate to take or to leave. It's the only one, I may nevertheless add; it's the basket with all my eggs. It's my conception, in short, of your duty.'
The girl's tired smile watched the word as if it had taken on a small grotesque visibility. 'You're wonderful on such subjects! I think I should leave you in no doubt,' she pursued, 'that if I were to sign my aunt's agreement I should carry it out, in honour, to the letter.'
'Rather, my own love! It's just your honour that I appeal to. The only way to play the game
'Do you mean in the way of marrying me?'
'What else should I mean? Marry properly——'
'And then?' Kate asked as he hung fire.
'And then—well, I
She looked about her and picked up her parasol. 'Because you're not so afraid of any one else in the world as you are of
'Dear no—not a bit.' He spoke as not resenting either the fear or the hope she imputed; met both imputations, in fact, with a sort of intellectual relief. 'I place the case for you wholly in your aunt's hands. I take her view, with my eyes shut; I accept in all confidence any man she selects. If he's good enough for
'Well then, good-bye, papa,' the girl said after a reflection on this that had perceptibly ended for her in a renunciation of further debate. 'Of course you understand that it may be for long.'
Her companion, hereupon, had one of his finest inspirations. 'Why not, frankly, for ever? You must do me the justice to see that I don't do things, that I've never done them, by halves—that if I offer you to efface myself, it's for the final, fatal sponge that I ask, well saturated and well applied.'
She turned her handsome, quiet face upon him at such length that it might well have been for the last time. 'I don't know what you're like.'
'No more do I, my dear. I've spent my life in trying, in vain, to discover. Like nothing—more's the pity. If there had been many of us, and we could have found each other out, there's no knowing what we mightn't have done. But it doesn't matter now. Good-bye, love.' He looked even not sure of what she would wish him to suppose on the subject of a kiss, yet also not embarrassed by his uncertainty.
She forbore in fact for a moment longer to clear it up. 'I wish there were some one here who might serve—for any contingency—as a witness that I
'Would you like me,' her father asked, 'to call the landlady?'
'You may not believe me,' she pursued, 'but I came really hoping you might have found some way. I'm very sorry, at all events, to leave you unwell.' He turned away from her, on this, and, as he had done before, took refuge, by the window, in a stare at the street. 'Let me put it—unfortunately without a witness,' she added after a moment, 'that there's only one word you really need speak.'
When he took this up it was still with his back to her. 'If I don't strike you as having already spoken it, our time has been singularly wasted.'
'I'll engage with you in respect to my aunt exactly to what she wants of me in respect to you. She wants me to choose. Very well, I