"If I want to live. I can," Milly repeated.
He had clumsily brought it on himself, but he hesitated with all the pity of it. "Ah then that I believe."
"I will, I will," she declared; yet with the weight of it somehow turned for him to mere light and sound.
He felt himself smiling through a mist. "You simply must!"
It brought her straight again to the fact. "Well then, if you say it, why mayn't we pay you our visit?"
"Will it help you to live?"
"Every little helps," she laughed; "and it's very little for me, in general, to stay at home. Only I shan't want to miss it—!"
"Yes?"—she had dropped again.
"Well, on the day you give us a chance."
It was amazing what so brief an exchange had at this point done with him. His great scruple suddenly broke, giving way to something inordinately strange, something of a nature to become clear to him only when he had left her. "You can come," he said, "when you like."