d ever pass between them on the
odious head. Yet she couldn't help also knowing that an important
effect, for his judgment, or at least for his amusement--which was his
feeling, since, marvellously, he did have feeling--was produced by it.
All her little pieces had now then fallen together for him like the
morsels of coloured glass that used to make combinations, under the
hand, in the depths of one of the polygonal peepshows of childhood. "So
that if it's a question of my doing anything under the sun that will
help----!"

"You'll _do_ anything under the sun? Good." He took that beautifully,
ever so pleasantly, for what it was worth; but time was needed--ten
minutes or so were needed on the spot--to deal even provisionally, with
the substantive question. It was convenient, in its degree, that there
was nothing she wouldn't do; but it seemed also highly and agreeably
vague that she should have to do anything. They thus appeared to be
taking her, together, for the moment, and almost for sociability, as
prepared to proceed to gratuitous extremities; the upshot of which was
in turn, that after much interrogation, auscultation, exploration, much
noting of his own sequences and neglecting of hers, had duly kept up
the vagueness, they might have struck themselves, or may at least
strike us, as coming back from an undeterred but useless voyage to the
north pole. Milly was ready, under orders, for the north pole; which
fact was doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her friend's
actual abstention from orders. "No," she heard him again distinctly
repeat it, "I don't want you for the present to do anything at all;
anything, that is, but obey a small prescription or two that will be
made clear to you, and let me within a few days come to see you at
home."

It was at first heavenly. "Then you'll see Mrs. Stringham." But she
didn't mind a bit now.

"Well, I shan't be afraid of Mrs. Stringham." And he said it once more
as she asked once more: "Absolutely not; I 'send' you nowhere.
England's all right--anywhere that's pleasant, convenient, decent, will
be all right. You say you can do exactly as you like. Oblige me
therefore by being so good as to do it. There's only one thing: you
ought of course, now, as soon as I've seen you again, to get out of
London."

Milly thought. "May I then go back to the continent?"

"By all means back to the continent. Do go back to the continent."

"Then how will you keep seeing me? But perh