Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/30

 Then it was really that he guessed, though there was something in him that couldn't make him eagerly jump to it. "Of course," he vaguely observed, "your having had your fill!"

"Yes," she sighed with all the meaning his drop didn't grasp, "I've had my fill!"—and she turned away as if he might already now see too much. The next minute, however, she was upon him again with what had to serve for the time as the rest of the story. "It's too monstrous a thing to ask, and I don't ask it. It makes everything so impossible that I should have liked a thousand times better your not speaking to me. It can do, you see, neither of us any good; for it only offers me as rather crazy—as heartlessly perverse if you like—and yet gives you no hope of curing or redeeming me. I should have to ask, you know," she now fully explained, "for a vow."

He smiled from further off. "That I shall take my oath?"

"Never yourself to go."

"Not anywhere, you mean?"

Her pause had this time more visible thought. "Nowhere you most want. Oh," she declared, "I know what you most want and what you've a thousand reasons for wanting. I know just what your admirable life has been and how, by so rare a chance, you've been held fast here and prevented. I know you're at last free, and that—except, if you insist on it, your idea about me 16