He had brought it out with a sharpness that did him good, but he had
naturally, none the less, to take the look it made her give him. "Thank
you very much."
Her expression, however, failed to check the words that had already
risen to his lips. "Rather than lay myself open to the least appearance
of it I'll go this very night."
"Then go," said Kate Croy.
He knew after a little, while they walked on again together, that what
was in the air for him, and disconcertingly, was not the violence, but
much rather the cold quietness, of the way this had come from her. They
walked on together, and it was for a minute as if their difference had
become of a sudden, in all truth, a split--as if the basis of his
departure had been settled. Then, incoherently and still more suddenly,
recklessly moreover, since they now might easily, from under the
arcades, be observed, he passed his hand into her arm with a force that
produced for them another pause. "I'll tell any lie you want, any your
idea requires, if you'll only come to me."
"Come to you?"
"Come to me."
"How? Where?"
She spoke low, but there was somehow, for his uncertainty, a wonder in
her being so equal to him. "To my rooms, which are perfectly possible,
and in taking which, the other day, I had you, as you must have felt,
in view. We can arrange it--with two grains of courage. People in our
case always arrange it." She listened as for the good information, and
there was support for him--since it was a question of his going step by
step--in the way she took no refuge in showing herself shocked. He had
in truth not expected of her that particular vulgarity, but the absence
of it only added the thrill of a deeper reason to his sense of
possibilities. For the knowledge of what she was he had absolutely to
_see_ her now, incapable of refuge, stand there for him in all the
light of the day and of his admirable merciless meaning. Her mere
listening in fact made him even understand himself as he hadn't yet
done. Idea for idea, his own was thus already, and in the germ,
beautiful. "There's nothing for me possible but to feel that I'm not a
fool. It's all I have to say, but you must know what it means. _With_
you I can do it--I'll go as far as you demand or as you will yourself.
Without you--I'll be hanged! And I must be sure."
She listened so well that she was really listening after he had ceased
to speak. He had kept his grasp of her, drawing her close, and though
they had again, for the time, stopped walking, his talk--for others at
a distance--might have been, in the matchless place, that of any
impressed tourist to any slightly more detached companion. On
possessing himself of her arm he had made her turn, so that they faced
afresh to Saint Mark's, over the great presence of which his eyes moved
while she twiddled her parasol. She now, however, made a motion that
confronted them finally with the opposite end. Then only she
spoke--"Please take your hand out of my arm." He understood at once:
she had made out in the shade of the gallery the issue of the others
from their place of purchase. So they went to them side by side, and it
was all right. The others had seen them as well and waited for them,
complacent enough, under one of the arches. They themselves too--he
argued that Kate would argue--looked perfectly ready, decently patient,
properly accommodating. They themselves suggested nothing worse--always
by Kate's system--than a pair of the children of a supercivilised age
making the best of an awkwardness. They didn't nevertheless hurry--that
would overdo it; so he had time to feel, as it were, what he felt. He
felt, ever so distinctly--it was with this he faced Mrs. Lowder--that
he was already in a sense possessed of what he wanted. There was more
to come--everything; he had by no means, with his companion, had it all
out. Yet what he was possessed of was real--the fact that she hadn't
thrown over his lucidity the horrid shadow of cheap reprobation. Of
this he had had so sore a fear that its being dispelled was in itself
of the nature of bliss. The danger had dropped--it was behind him there
in the great sunny space. So far she was good for what he wanted.