"But you see I didn't leave it. I didn't wait for that. I was afraid that my being dead would put you in a more embarrassing position than if I'd been alive. You might have hated those poems and yet you might have shrunk from suppressing them for fear of wounding the immortal vanity of a blessed spirit. Or you might have taken that horrid literary view I implored you not to take. You might have hesitated to inflict so great a loss on the literature of your country." He tried to speak lightly, as if it were merely a whimsical and extravagant notion that he should be reckoned among the poets. And yet in his heart he knew that it must be so. "But now the things can't be published unless you will accept them as they were originally meant. There's nothing gross about the transaction; nothing that need offend either you or me."
"I can't—I can't—"
"Well," he said gently, fearing the appearance of grossness in pressing the question, "we can settle that afterwards, can't we? Meanwhile at all events the publication rests with you."
"The publication has nothing whatever to do with me—The dedication, perhaps."
"You've accepted that. Still, you might object to your name appearing before the public with mine."
Lucia looked bewildered. She thought she had followed him in all his subtleties; but she had had difficulty in realizing that he was actually proposing to suppress his poems in deference to her scruples, if she had any. Some shadowy notion of his meaning was penetrating her now.
"My name," she said, "will mean nothing to the public."
"Then you consent?"
"Of course. It's absurd to talk about my consent. Besides, why should I mind now—when it is all over?"
He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, it was by an effort, as if he unwillingly obeyed some superior constraint. "If it hadn't been all over would you have minded then? Would you have refused your consent?"