He thought again. "I'm far—as I sufficiently showed you this morning—from washing my hands of you."
"Then," said Kate, "it's all right."
"All right?" His eagerness flamed. "You'll come?"
But he had had to see in a moment that it wasn't what she meant. "You'll have a free hand, a clear field, a chance—well, quite ideal."
"Your descriptions"—her "ideal" was such a touch!—"are prodigious. And what I don't make out is how, caring for me, you can like it."
"I don't like it, but I'm a person, thank goodness, who can do what I don't like."
It wasn't till afterwards that, going back to it, he was to read into this speech a kind of heroic ring, a note of character that belittled his own incapacity for action. Yet he saw indeed even at the time the greatness of knowing so well what one wanted. At the time too, moreover, he next reflected that he after all knew what he did. But something else on his lips was uppermost. "What I don't make out then is how you can even bear it."
"Well, when you know me better you'll find out how much I can bear." And she went on before he could take up, as it were, her too many implications. That it was left to him to know her, spiritually, "better" after his long sacrifice to knowledge—this for instance was a truth he hadn't been ready to receive so full in the face. She had mystified him enough, heaven knew, but that was rather by his own generosity than by hers. And what, with it, did she seem to suggest she might incur at his hands? In spite of these questions she was carrying him on. "All you'll have to do will be to stay."
"And proceed to my business under your eyes?"
"Oh dear no—we shall go."