ut always at last to
get the matter, for her own sense, and with a long sigh, sufficiently
straight. "It isn't a question of belief or of proof, absent or
present; it's inevitably, with her, a question of natural perception,
of insurmountable feeling. She irresistibly knows that there's something
between them. But she hasn't 'arrived' at it, as you say, at all; that's
exactly what she hasn't done, what she so steadily and intensely refuses
to do. She stands off and off, so as not to arrive; she keeps out to sea
and away from the rocks, and what she most wants of me is to keep at
a safe distance with her--as I, for my own skin, only ask not to come
nearer." After which, invariably, she let him have it all. "So far
from wanting proof--which she must get, in a manner, by my siding with
her--she wants DISproof, as against herself, and has appealed to me, so
extraordinarily, to side against her. It's really magnificent, when you
come to think of it, the spirit of her appeal. If I'll but cover them
up brazenly enough, the others, so as to show, round and about them, as
happy as a bird, she on her side will do what she can. If I'll keep them
quiet, in a word, it will enable her to gain time--time as against any
idea of her father's--and so, somehow, come out. If I'll take care
of Charlotte, in particular, she'll take care of the Prince; and it's
beautiful and wonderful, really pathetic and exquisite, to see what she
feels that time may do for her."

"Ah, but what does she call, poor little thing, 'time'?"

"Well, this summer at Fawns, to begin with. She can live as yet, of
course, but from hand to mouth; but she has worked it out for herself,
I think, that the very danger of Fawns, superficially looked at, may
practically amount to a greater protection. THERE the lovers--if they
ARE lovers!--will have to mind. They'll feel it for themselves, unless
things are too utterly far gone with them."

"And things are NOT too utterly far gone with them?"

She had inevitably, poor woman, her hesitation for this, but she put
down her answer as, for the purchase of some absolutely indispensable
article, she would have put down her last shilling. "No."

It made him always grin at her. "Is THAT a lie?"

"Do you think you're worth lying to? If it weren't the truth, for me,"
she added, "I wouldn't have accepted for Fawns. I CAN, I believe, keep
the wretches quiet."

"But how--at the worst?"

"Oh, 'the worst'--don't talk about the wors