Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/180

 say, don't try to say, anything that's impossible. There are much better things you can do."

He looked straight at it and then straight over it. "It's too monstrous that one can't ask you as a friend what one wants so to know."

"What is it you want to know?" She spoke, as by a sudden turn, with a slight hardness. "Do you want to know if I'm badly ill?"

The sound of it in truth, though from no raising of her voice, invested the idea with a kind of terror, but a terror all for others. Lord Mark winced and flushed—clearly couldn't help it; but he kept his attitude together and spoke with even unwonted vivacity. "Do you imagine I can see you suffer and not say a word?"

"You won't see me suffer—don't be afraid. I shan't be a public nuisance. That's why I should have liked this: it's so beautiful in itself, and yet it's out of the gangway. You won't know anything about anything," she added; and then, as if to make with decision an end, "And you don't! No, not even you." He faced her through it with the remains of his expression, and she saw him as clearly—for him—bewildered; which made her wish to be sure not to have been unkind. She would be kind once for all; that would be the end. "I'm very badly ill."

"And you don't do anything?"

"I do everything. Everything's this," she smiled; "I'm doing it now. One can't do more than live." 170