She hesitated. “When HAVEN’T we?”
“Well, YOU may have: if that’s what you call talking—never saying a word. But I haven’t. I’ve only to do at any rate, in the way of reasons, with my own.”
“And yours too then remain? Because, you know,” the girl pursued, “I AM like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like what he thinks.” Then so gravely that it was almost a supplication, “Don’t tell me,” she added, “that you don’t KNOW what he thinks. You do know.”
Their eyes, on that strange ground, could meet at last, and the effect of it was presently for Mr. Longdon. “I do know.”
“Well?”
“Well!” He raised his hands and took her face, which he drew so close to his own that, as she gently let him, he could kiss her with solemnity on the forehead. “Come!” he then very firmly said—quite indeed as if it were a question of their moving on the spot.
It literally made her smile, which, with a certain compunction, she immediately corrected by doing for him in the pressure of her lips to his cheek what he had just done for herself. “To-day?” she more seriously asked.
He looked at his watch. “To-morrow.”