vice from another without looking too
far ahead or weighing too many chances? The question turns entirely on
what you think of me. If you like me well enough to be willing to take
a few days' holiday with me, just for the pleasure of the thing, and the
pleasure you'll be giving me, let's shake hands on it. If you don't like
me well enough we'll shake hands too; only I shall be sorry," he ended.

"Oh, but I shall be sorry too!" Her face, as she lifted it to his,
looked so small and young that Darrow felt a fugitive twinge of
compunction, instantly effaced by the excitement of pursuit.

"Well, then?" He stood looking down on her, his eyes persuading her.
He was now intensely aware that his nearness was having an effect which
made it less and less necessary for him to choose his words, and he went
on, more mindful of the inflections of his voice than of what he was
actually saying: "Why on earth should we say good-bye if we're both
sorry to? Won't you tell me your reason? It's not a bit like you to let
anything stand in the way of your saying just what you feel. You mustn't
mind offending me, you know!"

She hung before him like a leaf on the meeting of cross-currents, that
the next ripple may sweep forward or whirl back. Then she flung up
her head with the odd boyish movement habitual to her in moments of
excitement. "What I feel? Do you want to know what I feel? That you're
giving me the only chance I've ever had!"

She turned about on her heel and, dropping into the nearest chair, sank
forward, her face hidden against the dressing-table.

Under the folds of her thin summer dress the modelling of her back and
of her lifted arms, and the slight hollow between her shoulder-blades,
recalled the faint curves of a terra-cotta statuette, some young image
of grace hardly more than sketched in the clay. Darrow, as he stood
looking at her, reflected that her character, for all its seeming
firmness, its flashing edges of "opinion", was probably no less
immature. He had not expected her to yield so suddenly to his
suggestion, or to confess her yielding in that way. At first he was
slightly disconcerted; then he saw how her attitude simplified his own.
Her behaviour had all the indecision and awkwardness of inexperience. It
showed that she was a child after all; and all he could do--all he had
ever meant to do--was to give her a child's holiday to look back to.

For a moment he fancied she was crying; but the next she was on he