“Then at the end of three months he has arrived at a value for you that I haven’t reached in all these years?”
“Yes,” she returned—“the value of my not being afraid of him.”
Vanderbank, on the bench, shifted his position, turning more to her and throwing an arm over the back. “And you’re afraid of ME?”
“Horribly—hideously.”
“Then our long, our happy relations—?”
“They’re just what makes my terror,” she broke in, “particularly abject. Happy relations don’t matter. I always think of you with fear.”
His elbow rested on the back and his hand supported his head. “How awfully curious—if it be true!”
She had been looking away to the sweet English distance, but at this she made a movement. “Oh Mr. Van, I’m ‘true’!”
As Mr. Van himself couldn’t have expressed at any subsequent time to any interested friend the particular effect upon him of the tone of these words his chronicler takes advantage of the fact not to pretend to a greater intelligence—to limit himself on the contrary to the simple statement that they produced in Mr. Van’s cheek a flush just discernible. “Fear of what?”
“I don’t know. Fear is fear.”