Page:The Sacred Fount (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901).djvu/132

 Following this with the final ease to which my encouragement directly ministered, he yet gave me, before he had quite arrived, a queer sidelong glance. "Wouldn't it really be better if you were to tell me? I don't ask her myself, you see. I don't put things to her in that way."

"Oh, no—I've shown you how I do see. That's a part of your admirable consideration. But I must repeat that nothing would induce me to tell you."

His poor old face fairly pleaded. "But I want so to know."

"Ah, there it is!" I almost triumphantly laughed.

"There what is?"

"Why, everything. What I've divined, between you and Mrs. Server, as the tie. Your wanting so to know."

I felt as if he were now, intellectually speaking, plastic wax in my hand. "And her wanting me not to?"

"Wanting me not to," I smiled.

He puzzled it out. "And being willing, therefore"

"That you—you only, for sympathy, for fellowship, for the wild wonder of it—should know? Well, for all those things, and in spite of what you call your fear, try her!" With which now at last I quitted him. 126