ase, destined never to rid itself of a
considerable chill. This she could tell him with authority, if she
could tell him nothing else; and she seemed to see now, in short, that
it would importantly simplify. "Yes, it makes another; but they all
together wouldn't make--well, I don't know what to call it but the
difference. I mean when one is--really alone. I've never seen anything
like the kindness." She pulled up a minute while he waited--waited
again as if with his reasons for letting her, for almost making her,
talk. What she herself wanted was not, for the third time, to cry, as
it were, in public. She _had_ never seen anything like the kindness,
and she wished to do it justice; but she knew what she was about, and
justice was not wronged by her being able presently to stick to her
point. "Only one's situation is what it is. It's me it concerns. The
rest is delightful and useless. Nobody can really help. That's why I'm
by myself to-day. I _want_ to be--in spite of Miss Croy, who came with
me last. If you can help, so much the better and also of course if one
can, a little, one's self. Except for that--you and me doing our
best--I like you to see me just as I am. Yes, I like it--and I don't
exaggerate. Shouldn't one, at the start, show the worst--so that
anything after that may be better? It wouldn't make any real
difference--it _won't_ make any, anything that may happen won't--to any
one. Therefore I feel myself, this way, with you, just as I am; and--if
you do in the least care to know--it quite positively bears me up." She
put it as to his caring to know, because his manner seemed to give her
all her chance, and the impression was there for her to take. It was
strange and deep for her, this impression, and she did, accordingly,
take it straight home. It showed him--showed him in spite of
himself--as allowing, somewhere far within, things comparatively
remote, things in fact quite, as she would have said, outside,
delicately to weigh with him; showed him as interested, on her behalf,
in other questions beside the question of what was the matter with her.
She accepted such an interest as regular in the highest type of
scientific mind--his _being_ the even highest, magnificently because
otherwise, obviously, it wouldn't be there; but she could at the same
time take it as a direct source of light upon herself, even though that
might present her a little as pretending to equal him. Wanting to know
more about a patient th