sorts
of reasons I can't tell you; and it's practically settled. It's better
for me, much; and I've only kept on at Cocker's for _you_."

"For me?"

Making out in the dusk that he fairly blushed, she now measured how far
he had been from knowing too much. Too much, she called it at present;
and that was easy, since it proved so abundantly enough for her that he
should simply be where he was. "As we shall never talk this way but to-
night--never, never again!--here it all is. I'll say it; I don't care
what you think; it doesn't matter; I only want to help you. Besides,
you're kind--you're kind. I've been thinking then of leaving for ever so
long. But you've come so often--at times--and you've had so much to do,
and it has been so pleasant and interesting, that I've remained, I've
kept putting off any change. More than once, when I had nearly decided,
you've turned up again and I've thought 'Oh no!' That's the simple
fact!" She had by this time got her confusion down so completely that
she could laugh. "This is what I meant when I said to you just now that
I 'knew.' I've known perfectly that you knew I took trouble for you; and
that knowledge has been for me, and I seemed to see it was for you, as if
there were something--I don't know what to call it!--between us. I mean
something unusual and good and awfully nice--something not a bit horrid
or vulgar."

She had by this time, she could see, produced a great effect on him; but
she would have spoken the truth to herself had she at the same moment
declared that she didn't in the least care: all the more that the effect
must be one of extreme perplexity. What, in it all, was visibly clear
for him, none the less, was that he was tremendously glad he had met her.
She held him, and he was astonished at the force of it; he was intent,
immensely considerate. His elbow was on the back of the seat, and his
head, with the pot-hat pushed quite back, in a boyish way, so that she
really saw almost for the first time his forehead and hair, rested on the
hand into which he had crumpled his gloves. "Yes," he assented, "it's
not a bit horrid or vulgar."

She just hung fire a moment, then she brought out the whole truth. "I'd
do anything for you. I'd do anything for you." Never in her life had
she known anything so high and fine as this, just letting him have it and
bravely and magnificently leaving it. Didn't the place, the associations
and circumstances, perfectly