mped against the piles of the
slip with a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung Archer
and Madame Olenska against each other. The young man, trembling, felt
the pressure of her shoulder, and passed his arm about her.

"If you're not blind, then, you must see that this can't last."

"What can't?"

"Our being together--and not together."

"No. You ought not to have come today," she said in an altered voice;
and suddenly she turned, flung her arms about him and pressed her lips
to his. At the same moment the carriage began to move, and a gas-lamp
at the head of the slip flashed its light into the window. She drew
away, and they sat silent and motionless while the brougham struggled
through the congestion of carriages about the ferry-landing. As they
gained the street Archer began to speak hurriedly.

"Don't be afraid of me: you needn't squeeze yourself back into your
corner like that. A stolen kiss isn't what I want. Look: I'm not even
trying to touch the sleeve of your jacket. Don't suppose that I don't
understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us
dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair. I couldn't have
spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm
looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great
flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered,
and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now
and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit
perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my
mind, just quietly trusting to it to come true."

For a moment she made no reply; then she asked, hardly above a whisper:
"What do you mean by trusting to it to come true?"

"Why--you know it will, don't you?"

"Your vision of you and me together?" She burst into a sudden hard
laugh. "You choose your place well to put it to me!"

"Do you mean because we're in my wife's brougham? Shall we get out and
walk, then? I don't suppose you mind a little snow?"

She laughed again, more gently. "No; I shan't get out and walk,
because my business is to get to Granny's as quickly as I can. And
you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities."

"I don't know what you mean by realities. The only reality to me is
this."

She met the words with a long silence, during which the carriage rolled
down an obscure side-street and then turned i