"I try to," said Gedge.
"Well," his visitor smiled, "I see you can."
Gedge hesitated. "I can't."
"Oh well," said his friend, "what does it matter?"
"I do speak," he continued. "I can't sometimes not."
"Then how do you get on?"
Gedge looked at him more abjectly, to his own sense, than ever at any one—even at Isabel when she frightened him. "I don't get on. I speak," he said—"since I've spoken to you."
"Oh we shan't hurt you!" the young man reassuringly laughed.
The twilight meanwhile had sensibly thickened, the end of the visit was indicated. They turned together out of the upper room and came down the narrow stair. The words just exchanged might have been felt as producing an awkwardness which the young woman gracefully felt the impulse to dissipate. "You must rather wonder why we've come." And it was the first note for Gedge of a further awkwardness—as if he had definitely heard it make the husband's hand, in a full pocket, begin to fumble.
It was even a little awkwardly that the husband still held off. "Oh we like it as it is. There's always something." With which they had approached the door of egress.