Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/150

THE GOLDEN BOWL cracks in things that we don't know—!" And she smiled with the sadness of it. "We can never then give each other anything."

He considered, but he met it. "Ah but one does know. I do at least—and by instinct. I don't fail. That will always protect me."

It was droll, the way he said such things; yet she liked him really the more for it. They fell in for her with a general, or rather with a special, vision. But she spoke with a mild despair. "What then will protect me?"

"Where I'm concerned I will. From me at least you've nothing to fear," he now quite amiably responded. "Anything you consent to accept from me—" But he paused.

"Well?"

"Well, shall be perfect."

"That's very fine," she presently answered. "It's vain, after all, for you to talk of my accepting things when you'll accept nothing from me."

Ah there better still he could meet her. "You attach an impossible condition. That, I mean, of my keeping your gift so to myself."

Well, she looked, before him there, at the condition—then abruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. She had a headshake of disenchantment—so far as the idea had appealed to her. It all appeared too difficult. "Oh my 'condition'—I don't hold to it. You may cry it on the housetops—anything I ever do."

"Ah well, then—!" This made, he laughed, all the difference. 120