Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/237

Rh I can't say how high, with these words, she struck me as standing, nor how the look that she gave me with them seemed to make me spring up beside her. We were at this elevation together a moment. 'I'll do anything in the world you say.'

'Then please come about nine.'

That struck me as so tantamount to saying 'And please therefore go this minute' that I immediately turned to the door. Before I passed it, however, I gave her time to ring out clear: 'I know what I'm about!' She proved it the next moment by following me into the hall with the request that I would leave her my proof. I placed it in her hands, and if she knew what she was about I wondered, outside, what I was.

 VI

say it was the desire to make this out that, in the evening, brought me back a little before my time. Mr. Beston had not arrived, and it's worth mentioning—for it was rather odd—that while we waited for him I sat with my hostess in silence. She spoke of my paper, which she had read over—but simply to tell me she had done so; and that was practically all that passed between us for a time at once so full and so quiet that it struck me neither as short nor as long. We felt, in the matter, so indivisible that we might have been united in some observance or some sanctity—to go through something decorously appointed. Without an observation we listened to the door-bell, and, still without one, a minute later, saw the person we expected stand there and show his surprise. It was at me he looked as he spoke to her.

'I'm not to see you alone?'

'Not just yet, please,' Miss Delavoy answered. 'Of what has suddenly come between us this gentleman is essentially a part, and I really think he'll be less present if we speak before him than if we attempt to deal with the question without him.' 