“By my life’s being my own again—to do what I want.”
“What you ‘want’”—Mrs. Gracedew’s handsome uplifted head had it all there, every inch of it—“is to keep your house.”
“Ah, but only,” he perfectly assented, “if, as you said, you find a way!”
“I have found a way—and there the way is: for me just simply not to touch the place. What you ‘want,’” she argued more closely, “is what made you give in to Prodmore. What you ‘want’ is these walls and these acres. What you ‘want’ is to take the way I first showed you.”
Her companion’s eyes, quitting for the purpose her face, looked to the quarter marked by her last words as at an horizon now remote. “Why, the way you first showed me was to marry Cora!”
She had to admit it, but as little as possible. “Practically—yes.”
“Well, it’s just ‘practically’ that I can’t!”
“I didn’t know that then,” said Mrs. Gracedew. “You didn’t tell me.”
He passed, with an approach to a grimace, his hand over the back of his head. “I felt a delicacy!”
“I didn’t even know that.” She spoke it almost sadly.