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 “What are you talking about?” she replied, rather vaguely, still looking out of the window.

He resented this divided attention more than, perhaps, he knew, and he thought how Mary would soon be on her way to America.

“Mary,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Haven’t we nearly done? Why don’t they take away these plates?”

Mary felt his agitation without looking at him; she felt convinced that she knew what it was that he wished to say to her.

“They'll come all in good time,” she said; and felt it necessary to display her extreme calmness by lifting a salt-cellar and sweeping up a little heap of bread-crumbs.

“I want to apologize,” Ralph continued, not quite knowing what he was about to say, but feeling some curious instinct which urged him to commit himself irrevocably, and to prevent the moment of intimacy from passing.

“I think I’ve treated you very badly. That is, I’ve told you lies. Did you guess that I was lying to you? Once in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and again to-day on our walk. I am a liar, Mary. Did you know that? Do you think you do know me?”

“I think I do,” she said.

At this point the waiter changed their plates.

“It’s true I don’t want you to go to America,” he said, looking fixedly at the table-cloth. “In fact, my feelings towards you seem to be utterly and damnably bad,” he said energetically, although forced to keep his voice low.

“If I weren’t a selfish beast I should tell you to have nothing more to do with me. And yet, Mary, in spite of the fact that I believe what I’m saying, I also believe that it’s good we should know each other—the world being what it is, you see—” and by a nod of his head he indicated the other occupants of the room, “for, of course, in an ideal state of things, in a decent community even,