Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/430

424 of his art and his innocence, almost an added link, and certainly a common, priceless ground for them to meet upon. It was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she brought out a reference that was comparatively straight. "The last twice that you've been here, you know, I never asked you," she said with an abrupt transition—they had been pretending, before this, to talk simply of the charm of the day before and of the interest of the country they had seen. The effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him; and her impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the needful in his coming to her after Sarah's flight. What she hadn't asked him then was to state to her where and how he stood for her: she had been resting on Chad's report of their midnight hour together in the Boulevard Malesherbes. The thing she therefore at present desired was ushered in by this recall of the late occasions on which, disinterested and merciful, she had not worried him. To-night, truly, she would worry him, and this was her appeal to him to let her risk it. He was not to mind if she bored him a little: she had behaved, after all, hadn't she? so awfully, awfully well.