Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/319

 "Yes—I understand that. But you also know"

He had faltered again, but all she knew she now wanted to say. "I'm speaking," she said soothingly, "of what he told her. It's that that I've taken you as knowing."

"Oh!" he sounded in spite of himself.

It appeared to have for her, he saw the next moment, the quality of relief, as if he had supposed her thinking of something else. Thereupon, straightway, that lightened it. "Oh, you thought I've known it for true!"

Her light had heightened her flush, and he saw that he had betrayed himself. Not, however, that it mattered, as he immediately saw still better. There it was now, all of it, at last, and this at least there was no postponing. They were left there with her idea—the one she was wishing to make him recognise. He had expressed ten minutes before his need to understand, and she was acting, after all, but on that. Only what he was to understand was no small matter; it might be larger even than as yet appeared.

He took again one of his turns, not meeting what she had last said; he mooned a minute, as he would have called it, at a window; and of course she could see that she had driven him to the wall. She did clearly, without delay, see it; on which her sense of having "caught" him became, as promptly, a scruple, and she spoke as if not to press it. "What 309