"Yes." She looked out to sea. There was a pause. I longed to hear the
details of the scene, which could not have lacked humorous elements. But
she left them to my imagination. "After that," she continued, "he saw I
was an honest woman and talked about marriage."

Jaffery's fingers fiddled with bits of grass. "What licks me, my dear,"
said he, "is how you came to take up with the fellow."

She shrugged her shoulders--it was the full shrug of the un-English
child of nature. "I don't know," she said, with her gaze still far away.
"He was so funny."

"But he was such a bounder, old lady," said Jaffery, in gentle
remonstrance.

"You all said so. But I thought you didn't like him because he was
different and could make me laugh. I guess I hated you all very much.
You seemed to want me to behave like Euphemia, and I couldn't behave
like Euphemia. I tried very hard when you used to take me out to
dinner."

Jaffery looked at her comically. But all he said was: "Go on."

"What can I say?"--she shrugged her shoulders again. "With him I hadn't
to be on my best behaviour. I could say anything I liked. You all think
it dreadful because I know, like everybody else, how children come into
the world, and can make jokes about things like that. Emma used to say
it was not ladylike--but he--he did not say so. He laughed. His friends
used to laugh. With him and his friends, I could, so to speak, take off
my stays"--she threw out her hands largely--"ouf!"

"I see," said Jaffery, frowning at his blades of grass.

"But between liking, figuratively, to take off your corsets in a crowd
of Bohemians and wanting to marry the worst of them lies a big
difference. You must have got fond of the fellow," he added, in a low
voice.

I said nothing. It was their affair. I was responsible to Barbara for
her safe deliverance and here she was delivered. My attitude, as you can
understand, was solely one of kindly curiosity. Liosha, for some
moments, also said nothing. Rather feverishly she pulled off her new
white gloves and cast them away; and I noticed an all but imperceptible
something--something, for want of a better word, like a ripple--sweep
through her, faintly shaking her bosom, infinitesimally ruffling her
neck and dying away in a flush on her cheek.

"You loved the fellow," said Jaffery, still picking at the grass-blades.

She bent forward, as she sat; hovered over him for a second or two and
clutched his shoulder.

"I didn't," s