Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/304

THE GOLDEN BOWL at his mercy, and he showed, as he went on, that he knew it. "We shall talk again, all the same, better than ever—I depend on it too much. Don't you remember what I told you so definitely one day before my marriage?—that, moving as I did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions, expectations, assumptions different from any I had known, I looked to you, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through. I beg you to believe," he added, "that I look to you yet."

His very insistence had fortunately the next moment affected her as bringing her help; with which at least she could hold up her head to speak. "Ah, you are through—you were through long ago. Or if you aren't you ought to be."

"Well then if I ought to be it's all the more reason why you should continue to help me. Because very distinctly I assure you I'm not. The new things—or ever so many of them—are still for me new things; the mysteries and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense element that I've failed to puzzle out. As we've happened so luckily to find ourselves again really taking hold together, you must let me, as soon as possible, come to see you; you must give me a good kind hour. If you refuse it me"—and he addressed himself to her continued reserve—"I shall feel that you deny, with a stony stare, your responsibility."

At this, as from a sudden shake, her reserve proved a weak vessel. She could bear her own, her private reference to the weight on her mind, but the touch of another hand made it too horribly press. "Oh I deny 274