or it, that any alteration of his
consciousness even in the possible sense of enlivenment, would make
their precious equilibrium waver. THAT was at the bottom of her mind,
that their equilibrium was everything, and that it was practically
precarious, a matter of a hair's breadth for the loss of the balance. It
was the equilibrium, or at all events her conscious fear about it, that
had brought her heart into her mouth; and the same fear was, on either
side, in the silent look she and Amerigo had exchanged. The happy
balance that demanded this amount of consideration was truly thus, as by
its own confession, a delicate matter; but that her husband had also HIS
habit of anxiety and his general caution only brought them, after all,
more closely together. It would have been most beautifully, therefore,
in the name of the equilibrium, and in that of her joy at their feeling
so exactly the same about it, that she might have spoken if she had
permitted the truth on the subject of her behaviour to ring out--on the
subject of that poor little behaviour which was for the moment so very
limited a case of eccentricity.

"'Why, why' have I made this evening such a point of our not all dining
together? Well, because I've all day been so wanting you alone that I
finally couldn't bear it, and that there didn't seem any great reason
why I should try to. THAT came to me--funny as it may at first sound,
with all the things we've so wonderfully got into the way of bearing
for each other. You've seemed these last days--I don't know what: more
absent than ever before, too absent for us merely to go on so. It's all
very well, and I perfectly see how beautiful it is, all round; but there
comes a day when something snaps, when the full cup, filled to the
very brim, begins to flow over. That's what has happened to my need of
you--the cup, all day, has been too full to carry. So here I am with it,
spilling it over you--and just for the reason that is the reason of my
life. After all, I've scarcely to explain that I'm as much in love with
you now as the first hour; except that there are some hours--which I
know when they come, because they almost frighten me--that show me I'm
even more so. They come of themselves--and, ah, they've been coming!
After all, after all--!" Some such words as those were what DIDN'T ring
out, yet it was as if even the unuttered sound had been quenched here
in its own quaver. It was where utterance would have broken down by