n't it? to try to
appear to clutch or to pick up. That consciousness in fact had a pang,
and she balanced, intensely, for the lingering moment, almost with a
terror of her endless power of surrender. He had only to press, really,
for her to yield inch by inch, and she fairly knew at present, while she
looked at him through her cloud, that the confession of this precious
secret sat there for him to pluck. The sensation, for the few seconds,
was extraordinary; her weakness, her desire, so long as she was yet not
saving herself, flowered in her face like a light or a darkness. She
sought for some word that would cover this up; she reverted to the
question of tea, speaking as if they shouldn't meet sooner. "Then about
five. I count on you."

On him too, however, something had descended; as to which this exactly
gave him his chance. "Ah, but I shall see you--! No?" he said, coming
nearer.

She had, with her hand still on the knob, her back against the door, so
that her retreat, under his approach must be less than a step, and yet
she couldn't for her life, with the other hand, have pushed him away.
He was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him,
kiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his
face--frowning, smiling, she mightn't know which; only beautiful and
strange--was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in
dreams. She closed her eyes to it, and so, the next instant, against her
purpose, she had put out her hand, which had met his own and which he
held. Then it was that, from behind her closed eyes, the right word
came. "Wait!" It was the word of his own distress and entreaty, the word
for both of them, all they had left, their plank now on the great sea.
Their hands were locked, and thus she said it again. "Wait. Wait." She
kept her eyes shut, but her hand, she knew, helped her meaning--which
after a minute she was aware his own had absorbed. He let her go--he
turned away with this message, and when she saw him again his back was
presented, as he had left her, and his face staring out of the window.
She had saved herself and she got off.

XLII

Later on, in the afternoon, before the others arrived, the form of their
reunion was at least remarkable: they might, in their great eastward
drawing-room, have been comparing notes or nerves in apprehension of
some stiff official visit. Maggie's mind, in its restlessness, even
play