Page:The Sacred Fount (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901).djvu/288

 you like. I want—you surely must understand if I want anything of it at all—to get it absolutely right." Then as this plea seemed still not to move her, I once more compressed my palms. "You won't help me?"

She bridled at last with a higher toss. "It wasn't with such views I came. I don't believe," she went on a shade more patiently, "I don't believe—if you want to know the reason—that you're really sincere."

Here indeed was an affair. "Not sincere—I?"

"Not properly honest. I mean in giving up."

"Giving up what?"

"Why, everything."

"Everything? Is it a question"—I stared—"of that?"

"You would if you were honest."

"Everything?" I repeated.

Again she stood to it. "Everything."

"But is that quite the readiness I've professed?"

"If it isn't then, what is?"

I thought a little. "Why, isn't it simply a matter rather of the renunciation of a confidence?"

"In your sense and your truth?" This, she indicated, was all she asked. "Well, what is that but everything?"

"Perhaps," I reflected, "perhaps." In fact, it no doubt was. "We'll take it then for everything, 282