stay. He affected you
very much there; you were not so calm when you came back to me from your
expedition to the park as you pretend to be now. To get away from him
you gave up all the rest."

"I know I wasn't so calm. But now I have had three months to think about
it--about the way he affected me there. I take it very quietly."

"No, you don't; you are not calm now!"

Verena was silent a moment, while Olive's eyes continued to search her,
accuse her, condemn her. "It's all the more reason you shouldn't give me
stab after stab," she replied, with a gentleness which was infinitely
touching.

It had an instant effect upon Olive; she burst into tears, threw herself
on her friend's bosom. "Oh, don't desert me--don't desert me, or you'll
kill me in torture," she moaned, shuddering.

"You must help me--you must help me!" cried Verena, imploringly too.

XXXVII

Basil Ransom spent nearly a month at Marmion; in announcing this fact I
am very conscious of its extraordinary character. Poor Olive may well
have been thrown back into her alarms by his presenting himself there;
for after her return from New York she took to her soul the conviction
that she had really done with him. Not only did the impulse of revulsion
under which Verena had demanded that their departure from Tenth Street
should be immediate appear to her a proof that it had been sufficient
for her young friend to touch Mr. Ransom's moral texture with her
finger, as it were, in order to draw back for ever; but what she had
learned from her companion of his own manifestations, his apparent
disposition to throw up the game, added to her feeling of security. He
had spoken to Verena of their little excursion as his last opportunity,
let her know that he regarded it not as the beginning of a more intimate
acquaintance but as the end even of such relations as already existed
between them. He gave her up, for reasons best known to himself; if he
wanted to frighten Olive he judged that he had frightened her enough:
his Southern chivalry suggested to him perhaps that he ought to let her
off before he had worried her to death. Doubtless, too, he had perceived
how vain it was to hope to make Verena abjure a faith so solidly
founded; and though he admired her enough to wish to possess her on his
own terms, he shrank from the mortification which the future would have
in keeping for him--that of finding that, after six months of courting
and in spite of all her sym