Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/306

THE AWKWARD AGE only asking to remedy it. "There's a certain amount of mystery we can now make—that it strikes me in fact we must make. Dear Mitchy," she continued almost with eagerness, "I don't think we can really tell."

He had fallen back in his chair, not looking at her now, and with his hands, from his supported elbows, clasped to keep himself more quiet. "Are you still talking about Aggie?"

"Why, I've scarcely begun!"

"Oh!" It was not irritation he appeared to express, but the slight strain of an effort to get into relation with the subject. Better to focus the image he closed his eyes awhile.

"You speak of something that may draw us together, and I simply reply that if you don't feel how near together we are in this I shouldn't imagine you ever would. You must have wonderful notions," she presently went on, "of the ideal state of union. I pack every one off for you—I banish everything that can interfere, and I don't in the least mind your knowing that I find the consequence delightful. You may talk, if you like, of what will have passed between us, but I shall never mention it to a soul; literally not to a living creature. What do you want more than that?" He opened his eyes in deference to the question, but replied only with a gaze as unassisted as if it had come through a hole in a curtain. "You say you're ready for an adventure, and it's just an adventure that I propose. If I can make you feel for yourself as I feel for you, the beauty of your chance to go in and save her—"

"Well, if you can?"—Mitchy at last broke in. "I don't think, you know," he said after a moment, "you'll find it easy to make your two ends meet."

She thought a little longer. "One of the ends is yours, so that you'll act with me. If I wind you up so that you go—" 296