Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/302

296 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, so that, given Mrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach; but he was not without the resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of confidence, he was likely soon to be moved to betray that 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 suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear it. Besides, I shall wriggle out."

The picture, at any rate, stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to be sincere. "I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you are to me."

Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet, even while her charming eyes rested on him with the truth of this, he none the less had his humour of honesty. "When I say suspense I mean, you know," he laughed, "suspense about my own case too!"