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 which propriety they had some ten minutes, of a quality quite distinct, in a couple of penny-chairs under one of the larger trees. They had taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened grass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from the broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of Park Lane, looked across the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine upon their freedom. They helped Charlotte thus to make her position--her temporary position--still more clear, and it was for this purpose, obviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down. He stood for a little before her, as if to mark the importance of not wasting time, the importance she herself had previously insisted on; but after she had said a few words it was impossible for him not to resort again to good-nature. He marked as he could, by this concession, that if he had finally met her first proposal for what would be "amusing" in it, so any idea she might have would contribute to that effect. He had consequently-- in all consistency--to treat it as amusing that she reaffirmed, and reaffirmed again, the truth that was HER truth.

"I don't care what you make of it, and I don't ask anything whatever of you--anything but this. I want to have said it-- that's all; I want not to have failed to say it. To see you once and be with you, to be as we are now and as we used to be, for one small hour--or say for two--that's what I have had for weeks in my head. I mean, of course, to get it BEFORE--before what you're going to do. So, all the while, you see," she went on with her eyes on him, "it was a question for me if I should be able to manage it in time. If I couldn't have come now I probably shouldn't have come at all--perhaps even ever. Now that I'm here I shall stay, but there were moments, over there, when I despaired. It wasn't easy--there were reasons; but it was either this or nothing. So I didn't struggle, you see, in vain. AFTER-- oh, I didn't want that! I don't mean," she smiled, "that it wouldn't have been delightful to see you even then--to see you at any time; but I would never have come for it. This is different. This is what I wanted. This is what I've got. This is what I shall always have. This is what I should have missed, of course," she pursued, "if you had chosen to make me miss it. If you had thought me horrid, had refused