Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/116

THE IVORY TOWER by what she says that I've gone—and I want her to know that I don't feel fooled."

If Gray's wonderment could have been said to rest anywhere, hour after hour, long enough to be detected in the act, the detaining question would have been more than any other perhaps that of whether Miss Gaw would "come up." Now that she did so however, in this quiet way, it had no strangeness that his being at once glad couldn't make but a mouthful of; and the recent interest of what she had lately written to him was as nothing to the interest of her becoming personally his uncle's theme. With which, at the same time, it was pleasanter to him than anything else to speak of her himself. "If you allude to Rosanna Gaw you'll no doubt understand how tremendously I want to see her."

The sick man waited a little—but not, it quite seemed, from lack of understanding. "She wants tremendously to see you, Graham. You might know that of course from her going to work so." Then again he gathered his thoughts and again after a little went on. "She had a good idea, and I love her for it; but I'm afraid my own hasn't been so very much to give her the satisfaction. I've wanted it myself, and—well, here I am getting it from you. Yes," he kept up, his eyes never moving from his nephew, "you couldn't give me more if you had tried, from so far back, on purpose. But I can't tell you half!" He exhaled a long 102