What you may
think of me--that doesn't in the least matter. What I want is that it
shall always be with you--so that you'll never be able quite to get rid
of it--that I DID. I won't say that you did--you may make as little of
that as you like. But that I was here with you where we are and as
we are--I just saying this. Giving myself, in other words, away--and
perfectly willing to do it for nothing. That's all."

She paused as if her demonstration was complete--yet, for the moment,
without moving; as if in fact to give it a few minutes to sink in;
into the listening air, into the watching space, into the conscious
hospitality of nature, so far as nature was, all Londonised, all
vulgarised, with them there; or even, for that matter, into her own open
ears, rather than into the attention of her passive and prudent friend.
His attention had done all that attention could do; his handsome,
slightly anxious, yet still more definitely "amused" face sufficiently
played its part. He clutched, however, at what he could best clutch
at--the fact that she let him off, definitely let him off. She let him
off, it seemed, even from so much as answering; so that while he smiled
back at her in return for her information he felt his lips remain closed
to the successive vaguenesses of rejoinder, of objection, that rose for
him from within. Charlotte herself spoke again at last--"You may want to
know what I get by it. But that's my own affair." He really didn't want
to know even this--or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as
if he didn't; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he
had taken refuge. He was glad when, finally--the point she had wished to
make seeming established to her satisfaction--they brought to what might
pass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to
say. Movement and progress, after this, with more impersonal talk, were
naturally a relief; so that he was not again, during their excursion, at
a loss for the right word. The air had been, as it were, cleared; they
had their errand itself to discuss, and the opportunities of London,
the sense of the wonderful place, the pleasures of prowling there, the
question of shops, of possibilities, of particular objects, noticed by
each in previous prowls. Each professed surprise at the extent of the
other's knowledge; the Prince in especial wondered at his friend's
possession of her London. He had rather prized his own possession, th