Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/99

Rh in showing me your exuberant joy. You clap your hands over my being—if you'll forgive the vulgarity of my calling things by their names—got out of the way; yet I must suffer in silence to see you rather more in it than ever."

Jean turned again upon her companion a face bewildered and alarmed: unguardedly stepping into water that she had believed shallow, she found herself caught up in a current of fast-moving depths—a cold, full tide that set straight out to sea. "Where am I?" her scared silence seemed for the moment to ask. Her quick intelligence indeed, came to her aid, and she spoke in a voice out of which she showed that she tried to keep her heart-beats. "You call things, certainly, by names that are extraordinary; but I, at any rate, follow you far enough to be able to remind you that what I just said about your engagement was provoked by your introducing the subject."

Rose was silent a moment, but without prejudice, clearly, to her firm possession of the ground she stood on—a power to be effectively cool in exact proportion as her interlocutress was troubled. "I introduced the subject for two reasons. One of