asions momentarily at a loss, but never
so much so, no doubt, as was thus testified to by her leaving the bench
and moving over once more to the rail of the terrace. She could carry
it off, in a manner, with her resources, that she was waiting with so
little to wait for; she could face him again, after looking off at
the sea, as if this slightly stiff delay, not wholly exempt from
awkwardness, had been but a fine scruple of her courtesy. She had
gathered herself in; after giving him time to appeal she could take
it that he had decided and that nothing was left for her to do. "Well
then," she clearly launched at him across the broad walk--"well then,
good-bye."

She had come nearer with it, as if he might rise for some show of
express separation; but he only leaned back motionless, his eyes on her
now--he kept her a moment before him. "Do you mean that we don't--that
we don't--?" But he broke down.

"Do I 'mean'--?" She remained as for questions he might ask, but it
was wellnigh as if there played through her dotty veil an irrepressible
irony for that particular one. "I've meant, for long years, I think, all
I'm capable of meaning. I've meant so much that I can't mean more. So
there it is."

"But if you go," he appealed--and with a sense as of final flatness,
however he arranged it, for his own attitude--"but if you go sha'n't I
see you again?"

She waited a little, and it was strangely for him now as if--though at
last so much more gorged with her tribute than she had ever been with
his--something still depended on her. "Do you _like_ to see me?" she
very simply asked.

At this he did get up; that was easier than to say--at least with
responsive simplicity; and again for a little he looked hard and in
silence at his letter; which at last, however, raising his eyes to her
own for the act, while he masked their conscious ruefulness, to his
utmost, in some air of assurance, he slipped into the inner pocket of
his coat, letting it settle there securely. "You're too wonderful." But
he frowned at her with it as never in his life. "Where does it all come
from?"

"The wonder of poor me?" Kate Cookham said. "It comes from _you_."

He shook his head slowly--feeling, with his letter there against his
heart, such a new agility, almost such a new range of interest. "I mean
so _much_ money--so extraordinarily much."

Well, she held him a while blank. "Does it seem to you extraordinarily
much--twelve-hundred-and-sixty? Beca