"The greater part of my experiment," he pointed out, "needs the help of only one person, and that person is you."
She moved a little uneasily in her chair. It might have been his fancy, but he imagined that she glanced under her eyelids toward the Prince of Seyre. The prince, however, had turned almost ostentatiously away from her. He was leaning across the table, talking to Faraday.
"You have not lost your gift of plain speech," she observed.
"I hope I never shall," he declared. "It seems to me to be the simplest and the best plan, after all, to say what you feel and to ask for what you want."
"So delightful in Cumberland and Utopia," she sighed; "so impracticable here!"
"Then since we can't find Utopia, come back to Cumberland," he suggested.
A reminiscent smile played for a moment about her lips.
"I wonder," she murmured, "whether I shall ever again see that dear, wonderful old house of yours, and the mist on the hills, and the stars shining here and there through it, and the moon coming up in the distance!"
"All these things you will see again," he assured her confidently. "It is because I want you to see them again that I am here."
"Just now, at this minute, I feel a longing for them," she whispered, looking across the table, out of the window, to the softly waving trees.