ht it worth while
to mention.

"Of course you have. That's rudimentary; that was plain to us long
ago. But isn't it almost as plain," Maria went on, "that you've even
yet your straight remedy? Really drag him away, as I believe you still
can, and you'd cease to have to count with her disappointment."

"Ah then," he laughed, "I should have to count with yours!"

But this barely struck her now. "What, in that case, should you call
counting? You haven't come out where you are, I think, to please ME."

"Oh," he insisted, "that too, you know, has been part of it. I can't
separate--it's all one; and that's perhaps why, as I say, I don't
understand." But he was ready to declare again that this didn't in the
least matter; all the more that, as he affirmed, he HADn't really as
yet "come out." "She gives me after all, on its coming to the pinch, a
last mercy, another chance. They don't sail, you see, for five or six
weeks more, and they haven't--she admits that--expected Chad would take
part in their tour. It's still open to him to join them, at the last,
at Liverpool."

Miss Gostrey considered. "How in the world is it 'open' unless you
open it? How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper into
his situation here?"

"He has given her--as I explained to you that she let me know
yesterday--his word of honour to do as I say."

Maria stared. "But if you say nothing!"

Well, he as usual walked about on it. "I did say something this
morning. I gave her my answer--the word I had promised her after
hearing from himself what HE had promised. What she demanded of me
yesterday, you'll remember, was the engagement then and there to make
him take up this vow."

"Well then," Miss Gostrey enquired, "was the purpose of your visit to
her only to decline?"

"No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another delay."

"Ah that's weak!"

"Precisely!" She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at
least, he knew where he was. "If I AM weak I want to find it out. If
I don't find it out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of
thinking I'm strong."

"It's all the comfort, I judge," she returned, "that you WILL have!"

"At any rate," he said, "it will have been a month more. Paris may
grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other
things that are hotter and dustier. I'm not afraid to stay on; the
summer here must be amusing in a wild--if it isn't a tame--way of