the complication as common to them. If Madame de Vionnet, under
Sarah's eyes, had pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no
doubt whatever that he had remained in it and that what he had really
most been conscious of for many hours together was the movement of the
vessel itself. They were in it together this moment as they hadn't yet
been, and he hadn't at present uttered the least of the words of alarm
or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel. He had other
things to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so
quickly had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly,
altogether richly, inevitable. That the outlook, however--given the
point of exposure--hadn't cleared up half so much as he had reckoned
was the first warning she received from him on his arrival. She had
replied with indulgence that he was in too great a hurry, and had
remarked soothingly that if she knew how to be patient surely HE might
be. He felt her presence, on the spot, he felt her tone and everything
about her, as an aid to that effort; and it was perhaps one of the
proofs of her success with him that he seemed so much to take his ease
while they talked. By the time he had explained to her why his
impressions, though multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had
been familiarly talking for hours. They baffled him because
Sarah--well, Sarah was deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance
to show herself. He didn't say that this was partly the effect of her
opening so straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given
Mrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach;
but he wasn't without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of
confidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved to
show how already, at moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing
directly with Mrs. Newsome. Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun
herself to feel it in him--and this naturally put it in her power to
torment him the more. From the moment she knew he COULD be tormented--!

"But WHY can you be?"--his companion was surprised at his use of the
word.

"Because I'm made so--I think of everything."

"Ah one must never do that," she smiled. "One must think of as few
things as possible."

"Then," he answered, "one must pick them out right. But all I mean
is--for I express myself with violence--that she's in a position to
watch me. There's an element of su