some view just presented to them; "but
in my life there's so little scope for it," she added. She reviewed her
daily task, the perpetual demands upon her for good sense, self-control,
and accuracy in a house containing a romantic mother. Ah, but her
romance wasn't THAT romance. It was a desire, an echo, a sound; she
could drape it in color, see it in form, hear it in music, but not in
words; no, never in words. She sighed, teased by desires so incoherent,
so incommunicable.

"But isn't it curious," William resumed, "that you should neither feel
it for me, nor I for you?"

Katharine agreed that it was curious--very; but even more curious to
her was the fact that she was discussing the question with William. It
revealed possibilities which opened a prospect of a new relationship
altogether. Somehow it seemed to her that he was helping her to
understand what she had never understood; and in her gratitude she was
conscious of a most sisterly desire to help him, too--sisterly, save for
one pang, not quite to be subdued, that for him she was without romance.

"I think you might be very happy with some one you loved in that way,"
she said.

"You assume that romance survives a closer knowledge of the person one
loves?"

He asked the question formally, to protect himself from the sort of
personality which he dreaded. The whole situation needed the most
careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and
disturbing exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think
of without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves. And yet each
sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or
other about his own desires hitherto undefined by him, the source of his
difficulty with Katharine. The wish to hurt her, which had urged him to
begin, had completely left him, and he felt that it was only Katharine
now who could help him to be sure. He must take his time. There were so
many things that he could not say without the greatest difficulty--that
name, for example, Cassandra. Nor could he move his eyes from a certain
spot, a fiery glen surrounded by high mountains, in the heart of the
coals. He waited in suspense for Katharine to continue. She had said
that he might be very happy with some one he loved in that way.

"I don't see why it shouldn't last with you," she resumed. "I can
imagine a certain sort of person--" she paused; she was aware that he
was listening with the greatest intentness,