“What is the matter?” I answered. “Yes, she told it me, but not with any reference to my suggestion, though I made that to her—quite in the elder-brotherly spirit, of course, and with an eye to Plato’s moral philosophy for our literary ballast. She might not consent to go, after all; I think that likely enough; only, supposing by any chance the venture appealed to her, would it have your sanction?”
We were strolling leisurely on, and Marion did not at once answer.
“It just occurred to me,” I continued, “as a possible resource, no more. It would take us, anyhow for the time being, out of the arena of contention, and if we did it cleverly, vanishing ‘like the baseless fabric of a vision,’ it might prove more baffling to the chase than our continuing to lie and sulk here under cover. You see, being hidden somewhere in Paris, as they would suppose us still to be——”
Marion interrupted me: “How long would you propose to stay away?”
“How long would you advise?” I said, my eyes beginning to open.
“I don’t think it matters.”
“Then you have no objection?”
“No; none at all.”
She fairly took my breath away. This astonishing acquiescence, where I had expected only obloquy and castigation! Yet I received, in appearance, the thunderbolt nonchalantly.
“Very well, then,” I said—“if the question should arise.”