Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/144

THE IVORY TOWER It would be too late even if we wanted to—and you can judge for yourself how little that's my wish. So here we are, you see, to make the best of it."

"When you talk of my 'fate,'" he allowed himself almost the amusement of answering, "you freeze the current of my blood; but when you say 'our situation,' and that we're in it together, that's a little better, and I assure you that I shall not for a moment stay in anything, whatever it may be, in which you're not close beside me. So there you are at any rate—and I matter at least as much as this, whatever the mistake: that I have hold of you as tight as ever you've been held in your life, and that, whatever and whatever the mistake, you've got to see me through."

"Well, I took my responsibility years ago, and things came of it"—so she made reply; "and the other day I took this other, and now this has come of it, and that was what I wanted, and wasn't afraid of, and am not afraid of now—like the fears that came to me after the Dresden time." No more direct than that was her answer to his protest, and what she subjoined still took as little account of it. "I rather lost them, those old fears—little by little; but one of the things I most wanted the other day was to see whether before you here they wouldn't wholly die down. They're over, they're over," she repeated; "I knew three minutes of you would do it—and not a ghost of them remains." 130