Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/32

 been to be got at only by immense experience. You know everything, and yet you've learnt it all over here; some miracle or other has worked for you or—it comes to the same thing!—for my vision of you: I don't know, even with your happy conditions, after all, what it can have been, but it makes you, doesn't it? the single case of your kind. If you had been spoiled there would have been no use—and of course as it is there's none. Only I can't help having just put it to you thus," she wound up, "that you've not been spoiled."

There was no doubt of the nature of the effort made by Pendrel to do these remarks justice. "You do put it to me with the magnificence that attends every breath of your being. I haven't been spoiled—I see quite what you mean—I only can be."

"You only will be," she said almost tenderly. "You'll be beautifully spoiled."

"For you, that is, of course," Ralph went on.

"For me—certainly. Isn't it only of myself after all that we're talking?"

He answered nothing and the silence between them was for a little as if she had suddenly given him a chance. This effect moreover grew from what he finally said; which was after he had restlessly moved to the window, looked out thence for some instants and then come back. "You would definitely accept me if I did formally give up everything but this?"—and he jerked his 18