"And don't you think so?"
"I think you'd want to be," she smiled, "if you knew how."
"But I shouldn't know how?"
"You see, it's a situation that calls directly for a woman; and you're so essentially a man. When Dorothea arrives, she won't be a headstrong, runaway girl; she'll be a poor little terrified child, frightened to death at what she has done, and wanting nothing so much as to creep sobbing into her mother's arms and be comforted. If you could only—"
"I'll do anything you tell me."
"It's no use telling; you have to know. It's a case in which you must act by instinct, and not by rule of thumb."
In her eagerness to have something to say which would keep conversation away from dangerous themes, she spoke exhaustively on the subject of parental tact, holding well to the thread of her topic until she perceived that he was not so much listening to what she said as thinking of her. But she had gained her point, and led him to see that Dorothea was to be treated leniently, which was sufficient for the moment.
"Now," she finished, rising, "I think I'll take your advice, and go and rest till she comes. That's my door, just opposite. I chose the room for its convenience in receiving Dorothea. You'll be sure to call me, won't you, the minute you hear the sound of wheels?"
He had sat gazing up at her, but now he, too, rose. It was a minute at which their common anxiety regarding Dorothea slipped temporarily into the background, allowing the main question at issue between them to assert itself; but it asserted itself silently. He had meant to speak, but he could only look. She had meant to withdraw, but she remained to return his look with the lingering, quiet, steady gaze which time and place and circumstance seemed to make the most natural mode of expression for the things that were vital between them. What passed thus defied all analysis of thought, as well as all utterance in language, but it was understood by each in his or her own way. To her it was the greeting and farewell of souls in different spheres, who again pass one another in space. For him it was the dumb, stifled cry of nature, the claim of a heart demanding its rightful place in another heart, the protest of love that has been debarred from its return by a cruel code of morals, a preposterous convention, grown suddenly meaningless to a woman like her and to a man like him. Something like this it would have been a relief to him to cry out, had not the strong hand of custom been upon him and forced him to say that which was far below the pressure of his yearning.
"This isn't the time to talk about what I owe you," he said, feeling the insufficiency of his words; "it's too much to be disposed of in a few phrases."