"Well, you know, I've felt my way; I've gone step by step; you wouldn't
believe how I've tried it on. _This_--where you see me--is where I've come
out." After which, as they said nothing: "You hadn't thought I _could_ come
out?"
Again they just waited, but the husband spoke: "Are you so awfully sure you
are out?"
Gedge drew himself up in the manner of his moments of emotion, almost
conscious even that, with his sloping shoulders, his long lean neck and his
nose so prominent in proportion to other matters, he resembled the more a
giraffe. It was now at last he really caught on. "I _may_ be in danger
again--and the danger is what has moved you? Oh!" the poor man fairly
moaned. His appreciation of it quite weakened him, yet he pulled himself
together. "You've your view of my danger?"
It was wondrous how, with that note definitely sounded, the air was
cleared. Lucid Mr. Hayes, at the end of a minute, had put the thing in a
nutshell. "I don't know what you'll think of us--for being so beastly
curious."
"I think," poor Gedge grimaced, "you're only too beastly kind."
"It's all your own fault," his friend returned, "for presenting us (who are
not idiots, say) with so striking a picture of a crisis. At our other
visit, you remember," he smiled, "you created an anxiety for the opposite
reason. Therefore if _this_ should again be a crisis for you, you'd really
give us the case with an ideal completeness."
"You make me wish," said Morris Gedge, "that it might be one."
"Well, don't try--for our amusement--to bring one on. I don't see, you
know, how you can have much margin. Take care--take care."
Gedge did it pensive justice. "Yes, that was what you said a year ago. You
did me the honour to be uneasy--as my wife was."
Which determined on the young woman's part an immediate question. "May I
ask then if Mrs. Gedge is now at rest?"
"No--since you do ask. _She_ fears at least that I go too far; she doesn't
believe in my margin. You see we _had_ our scare after your visit. They
came down."