Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/18

4 "From Miss Armiger. She appears to have had it from Paul himself."

The girl gave out her mild surprise. "Why has he told her?"

Tony hesitated. "Because she's such a good person to tell things to."

"Is it her immediately telling them again that makes her so?" Jean inquired with a faint smile.

Faint as this smile was, Tony met it as if he had been struck by it, and as if indeed, in the midst of an acquaintance which four years had now consecrated, he had not quite got used to being struck. That acquaintance had practically begun, on an unforgettable day, with his opening his eyes to it from an effort which had been already then the effort to forget his suddenly taking her in as he lay on the sofa in his hall. From the way he sometimes looked at her it might have been judged that he had even now not taken her in completely—that the act of slow, charmed apprehension had yet to melt into accepted knowledge. It had in truth been made continuous by the continuous expansion of its object. If the sense of lying there on the sofa still sometimes came back to Tony, it was because he was interested