e for her, shown her the way,
or something like it, that she hadn't been sure of yesterday; which
moreover wasn't what he had intended--he had come armed for showing her
nothing; so that after she had gone on with the same gain of gaiety,
"You must at any rate comfortably have yours," there was but one answer
for him to make.

His eyes played again over the tea-things--they seemed strangely to help
him; but he didn't sit down.

"I've come, as you see--but I've come, please, to understand; and if you
require to be alone with me, and if I break bread with you, it seems to
me I should first know exactly where I am and to what you suppose I so
commit myself." He had thought it out and over and over, particularly
the turn about breaking bread; though perhaps he didn't give it, in
her presence--this was impossible, her presence altered so many
things--quite the full sound or the weight he had planned.

But it had none the less come to his aid--it had made her perfectly
grave. "You commit yourself to nothing. You're perfectly free. It's only
I who commit myself."

On which, while she stood there as if all handsomely and deferentially
waiting for him to consider and decide, he would have been naturally
moved to ask her what she committed herself then _to_--so moved, that
is, if he hadn't, before saying it, thought more sharply still of
something better. "Oh, that's another thing."

"Yes, that's another thing," Kate Cookham returned. To which she added,
"So _now_ won't you sit down?" He sank with deliberation into the seat
from which Captain Roper had risen; she went back to her own and while
she did so spoke again. "I'm _not_ free. At least," she said over her
tea-tray, "I'm free only for this."

Everything was there before them and around them, everything massive and
shining, so that he had instinctively fallen back in his chair as for
the wondering, the resigned acceptance of it; where her last words
stirred in him a sense of odd deprecation. Only for "that"? "That" was
everything, at this moment, to his long inanition, and the effect, as if
she had suddenly and perversely mocked him, was to press the spring of a
protest. "Isn't 'this' then riches?"

"Riches?" she smiled over, handing him his cup--for she had triumphed in
having struck from him a question.

"I mean haven't you a lot of money?" He didn't care now that it was out;
his cup was in his hand, and what was that but proved interest? He had
succumbed to the