"You haven't told me what it was," he objected.
"Oh dear me, neither I have!" cried Ora, drawing back from him; her eyes swam in tears, but her lips bent in smiles. "How awfully absurd of me!" she exclaimed, and broke into the low luxurious laughter that he loved. "Well, it was something bad of me; so it couldn't be true, could it?"
He pressed her to tell him what it was and she told him, becoming again sorrowful and wounded as she rehearsed the story; the point of view surprised her so. To Ashley it was no surprise, nothing more than a sharp unsparing utterance of the doubts of his own mind. His quarrel with Alice was that she said it, not that she thought it; she was bound to think it when he in all his infatuation could not stifle the thought. Was he in love then with a bundle of emotions and ready to give away his life in exchange for a handful of poses? In self-defence he embraced the conclusion and twisted it to serve his purpose. What more is anybody, he asked—what more than the sheet on which slide after slide is momentarily shewn?
"But still she was wrong," said Ora. "Oh, I can forgive her. Of course I forgive her. It's only because she's fond of you. I know I'm not really like that. It's not the true me, Ashley."
The idea of the "true me" delighted Ora, and the "true me" required that Mr. Fenning should be met punctually on Sunday next. The renunciation raised its head again.
"The 'true me,' then, is really a very sober and correct person?" asked Ashley.
"Yes," she answered, enjoying the paradox she asserted. Her interest in herself was frank and almost might be called artistic. "Do you think me strange?" she asked. "I believe you're laughing at me half the time."
"And the other half?"
"We weep together, don't we? Poor Ashley!"
On the Saturday he came to see her again in order to make final arrangements for their expedition of the next day. There was also a point on which they had never touched, to which, as he believed, Ora had given no consideration. Was Mr. Fenning to settle down in the little house at Chelsea? At present the establishment was in all its appearance and fittings so exclusively feminine that it seemed an impossible residence for a man. Ora was not in the room when Janet ushered him in; that respectable servant lingered near the door and, after a moment's apparent hesitation, spoke to him.