She just perceptibly shrugged her shoulders.
"You haven't said whether you will let me come with you on your walk," he began again, after a short pause.
"I would sooner you didn't," she told him. "It can't do any good. There can be nothing new that you want to ask my advice about. I said all I had to say to you about that five weeks ago, and you took no notice. I can only repeat what I said then."
"But I can't go now," he protested. "I've given my promise. I made a sort of bargain in fact."
She shook her head impatiently. "You needn't keep it," she said.
"That's absurd," he remonstrated, getting to his feet. "Of course I must keep my promise in any circumstances."
"I suppose you do really believe that?" she asked, looking up at him. "Would you keep it just the same, for instance, if you knew for certain that it meant staying on here for ten years and getting nothing, absolutely nothing, at the end of it? Would you, honestly? Or don't you think you'd ask to be let off?"
"I might ask to be let off," he admitted, after a few seconds' thought.
"Then you'll only be keeping your promise or bargain or whatever it is because you want to stay—or because you've got to," she said.
"Perhaps," he agreed. "But I've never said that I didn't want to stay. I do."