"For my marriage. For everything."
She thought again. "Thank goodness then that if there BE a crack
we know it! But if we may perish by cracks in things that we
don't know--!" And she smiled with the sadness of it. "We can
never then give each other anything."
He considered, but he met it. "Ah, but one does know. _I_ do, at
least--and by instinct. I don't fail. That will always protect
me."
It was funny, the way he said such things; yet she liked him,
really, the more for it. They fell in for her with a general, or
rather with a special, vision. But she spoke with a mild despair.
"What then will protect ME?"
"Where I'm concerned _I_ will. From me at least you've nothing to
fear," he now quite amiably responded. "Anything you consent to
accept from me--" But he paused.
"Well?"
"Well, shall be perfect."
"That's very fine," she presently answered. "It's vain, after
all, for you to talk of my accepting things when you'll accept
nothing from me."
Ah, THERE, better still, he could meet her. "You attach an
impossible condition. That, I mean, of my keeping your gift so to
myself."
Well, she looked, before him there, at the condition--then,
abruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. She had a headshake of
disenchantment--so far as the idea had appealed to her. It all
appeared too difficult. "Oh, my 'condition'--I don't hold to it.
You may cry it on the housetops--anything I ever do."
"Ah well, then--!" This made, he laughed, all the difference.
But it was too late. "Oh, I don't care now! I SHOULD have liked
the Bowl. But if that won't do there's nothing."
He considered this; he took it in, looking graver again; but
after a moment he qualified. "Yet I shall want some day to give
you something."