"I say nothing more foolish than that I shall by that time see you
again."
At this she slowly released him. "Of course it will be comparatively
easy for you, but it won't really be worth your while to come back to
spite me.
"I shall come back," said Ralph, "because I shall want to."
She had another of those weighted headshakes which, as if determined
less from within than from without, suggested the perfect working of her
beauty rather than that of her thought. "No--it's there that you're
wrong and that I'm so right. I'm not such an idiot as not to know that
there will always be a steamer and that you can always pay your passage.
When I said that if you go you'll never come back I meant that you'll
never wish to. Of course you can come back without wishing as much as
you like. But that," she blandly remarked, "won't do for me."
"How well you know what I wish," he exhaled, "and how much every way you
know about everything!"
"Well," she patiently replied before he had time finally to leave her,
"it's not wholly my fault if an expression you once used to me has much
worked in me. I remembered it as soon as I saw you to-day, and it would
have made a folly of my talking to you of my conditions if I had done
that with any other practical view than to call your attention to our
impossibilities. You used it on one occasion when I was last at home in
a way that has made me never forget it."
Ralph wondered. "I've used doubtless plenty of expressions and in plenty
of absurd ways. But what in the world was this one?"