He saw that she had determined that he should not frighten her again, or, at all events, that he should never see it if he did frighten her; and he had himself determined that his mist should never again close round her. She should not see, even if she guessed at it pretty clearly, the interpretation that he put upon the afternoon’s frictions and failures, and, on the plane of a matter-of-fact agreement as to practice, he drew her on to talk of her factory-girls, of the standards of wages, the organization of woman’s labor, so that she presently said, “What a pleasure it is to hear you talking sense, Gavan!”
“You have heard me talk a great deal of nonsense, I’m sure.”
“A great deal. Worse than Basil Mayburn’s.”
“I saw too clearly to-day the sorry figure I must have cut in your eyes. I have learned to hold my tongue. When one can only say things that sound particularly silly that is an obvious duty.”
“I am glad to hear you use the word, my dear Gavan; use it, even though it means nothing to you. Glissez mortel, n’appuyez pas should be your motto for a time; then, after some wholesome skating about on what seems the deceptive, glittering surface of things you will find, perhaps, that it isn’t an abyss the ice stretches over, but a firm meadow, the ice melted off it and no more need of skates.”
He was quite willing that she should so see his case; he was easier to live with, no doubt, on this assumption of his curability.
Eppie, still leaning back, still with folded arms, had once more closed her eyes, involuntarily sighing, as though under her own words the haunting echo of the abyss had sounded for her.
She had not yet shown him what the real trouble was, and he asked her now, in this second lull of their talk, “What else is there besides the factory-girls and Miss Grey?”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “You guess that there is something else.”
“I can see it.”