herent and easy thing by the comparatively
clumsy method of sound and statement. "No, I never made love to you; it
would in fact have been absurd, and I don't care--though I almost know,
in the sense of almost remembering!--who did and who didn't; but you
were always about, and so was I, and, little as you may yourself care
who I did it to, I dare say you remember (in the sense of having known
of it!) any old appearances that told. But we can't afford at this time
of day not to help each other to have had--well, everything there was,
since there's no more of it now, nor any way of coming by it except so;
and therefore let us make together, let us make over and recreate, our
lost world; for which we have after all and at the worst such a lot
of material. You were in particular my poor dear sisters' friend--they
thought you the funniest little brown thing possible; so isn't that
again to the good? You were mine only to the extent that you were so
much in and out of the house--as how much, if we come to that, wasn't
one in and out, south of Thirtieth Street and north of Washington
Square, in those days, those spacious, sociable, Arcadian days, that we
flattered ourselves we filled with the modern fever, but that were so
different from any of these arrangements of pretended hourly Time
that dash themselves forever to pieces as from the fiftieth floors of
sky-scrapers."

This was the kind of thing that was in the air, whether he said it or
not, and that could hang there even with such quite other things as
more crudely came out; came in spite of its being perhaps calculated to
strike us that these last would have been rather and most the unspoken
and the indirect. They were Cornelia's contribution, and as soon as she
had begun to talk of Mrs. Worthingham--_he_ didn't begin it!--they had
taken their place bravely in the centre of the circle. There they made,
the while, their considerable little figure, but all within the ring
formed by fifty other allusions, fitful but really intenser irruptions
that hovered and wavered and came and went, joining hands at moments
and whirling round as in chorus, only then again to dash at the slightly
huddled centre with a free twitch or peck or push or other taken
liberty, after the fashion of irregular frolic motions in a country
dance or a Christmas game.

"You're so in love with her and want to marry her!"--she said it all
sympathetically and yearningly, poor crapy Cornelia; as if it wer