is of what use is
your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome--as you do me the
honour to find him--IS just to know me."

"I see," he mused, still with his eyes on her. "I shouldn't have met
you to-night."

She raised and dropped her linked hands. "It doesn't matter. If I
trust you why can't you a little trust me too? And why can't you
also," she asked in another tone, "trust yourself?" But she gave him
no time to reply. "Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I'm glad at any
rate you've seen my child."

"I'm glad too," he said; "but she does you no good."

"No good?"--Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. "Why she's an angel
of light."

"That's precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don't try to find out.
I mean," he explained, "about what you spoke to me of--the way she
feels."

His companion wondered. "Because one really won't?"

"Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She's the
most charming creature I've ever seen. Therefore don't touch her.
Don't know--don't want to know. And moreover--yes--you won't."

It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. "As a favour to
you?"

"Well--since you ask me."

"Anything, everything you ask," she smiled. "I shan't know
then--never. Thank you," she added with peculiar gentleness as she
turned away.

The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had
been tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her
for his independence he had, under pressure from a particular
perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and,
with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven
in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which
he signally felt. He hadn't detached, he had more closely connected
himself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this
circumstance, met another pair which had just come within their range
and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had done. He
recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had
apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham
wasn't, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most
closed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the
room obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged
with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention
had been benevolently given. "I can'