Page:In The Cage (London, Duckworth, 1898).djvu/112

106 'But I tell you I'd go anywhere. Don't you believe it?'

'Yes, for once or twice. But you'd soon see it wouldn't do for you.'

He smoked and considered; seemed to stretch himself a little and, with his legs out, surrender himself comfortably. 'Well, well, well—I believe everything you say. I take it from you—anything you like—in the most extraordinary way.' It struck her certainly—and almost without bitterness—that the way in which she was already, as if she had been an old friend, arranging for him and preparing the only magnificence she could muster, was quite the most extraordinary. 'Don't, don't go!' he presently went on. 'I shall miss you too horribly!'

'So that you just put it to me as a definite request?'—oh, how she tried to divest this of all sound of the hardness of bargaining! That ought to have been easy enough, for what was she arranging to get? Before he could answer she had continued: 'To be perfectly fair, I should tell you I recognise at Cocker's certain