Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/135

Rh of that.' With which, as Braddle's face had exceedingly fallen, 'But I know what you then wanted and what you still want to know,' she added.

On this, for a time, they sat there with a long look. 'I would rather have had it from him,' he said at last.

'It would certainly have been more natural,' she intelligently returned. 'But he has given you no chance to press him again?'

'None—and with an evident intention: seeing me only with you.'

'Well, at the present moment he doesn't see you at all. Nor me either!' Mrs. Chilver added, as if to cover something in the accent of her former phrase. 'But if he has avoided close quarters with you, it has been not to disappoint you.'

'He won't, after all, tell me?'

'He can't. He has nothing to tell.'

Poor Braddle showed at this what his disappointment could be. 'He has not even yet asked you?'

'Not even yet—after fifteen months. But don't be hard on him,' she pleaded. 'You wouldn't.'

'For all this time?' Braddle spoke almost with indignation at the charge. 'My dear lady—rather!'

'No, no,' she gently insisted, 'not even to tell him.'

'He told you then,' Braddle demanded, 'that I thought he ought, if on no other grounds, to ask just in order to tell me?'

'Oh dear, no. He only told me he had met you, and where you had been. We don't speak of his "asking," she explained.

'Don't you?' Her visitor stared.

'Never.'

'Then how have you known?'

'What you want so much? Why, by having seen it in you before—and just how much—and seeing it now. I've been feeling all along,' she said, 'how you must have argued.'

'Oh, we didn't argue!'

'I think you did.'