Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/228

 It brought her eyes round to him again, and he could see how, after all, somewhere deep within, she tasted his rebellion as more sweet than bitter. Its effect on her spirit and her sense was visibly to hold her for an instant. "We've gone too far," she none the less pulled herself together to reply. "Do you want to kill her?"

He had an hesitation that was not all candid. "Kill, you mean, Aunt Maud?"

"You know whom I mean. We've told too many lies."

Oh, at this his head went up. "I, my dear, have told none!"

He had brought it out with a sharpness that did him good, but he had naturally, none the less, to take the look it made her give him. "Thank you very much."

Her expression, however, failed to check the words that had already risen to his lips. "Rather than lay myself open to the least appearance of it I'll go this very night."

"Then go," said Kate Croy.

He knew after a little, while they walked on again together, that what was in the air for him, and disconcertingly, was not the violence, but much rather the cold quietness, of the way this had come from her. They walked on together, and it was quite, for a minute, as if their difference had become, of a sudden, in all truth, a split—as if the basis of his departure had been settled. Then, incoherently and 218