'Good God!'—he said, with an impatient groan.—'You talk as though she were going to give herself any opportunity to find out.'
'Well, let us talk so, for argument. You're not exactly a novice, you know, in these things. How is one to be sure that you're not playing with Lucy—as you played with the book—till you can go back to the play you really like best?'
'What do you mean?' he cried, starting with indignation—'the play of politics?'
'Politics—ambition—what you will. Suppose Lucy finds herself taken up and thrown down—like the book?—when the interest's done?'
She uncovered her eyes, and looked at him steadily, coldly. It was an
Eleanor he did not know.
He sprang up in his anger and discomfort, and began to pace again in front of her.
'Oh well—if you think as badly of me as that'—he said fiercely,—'I don't see what good can come of this conversation.'
There was a pause. At the end of it, Eleanor said in another voice:
'Did you ever give her any indication of what you felt—before to-day?'
'I came near—in the Borghese gardens,' he said reluctantly. 'If she had held out the tip of her little finger—But she didn't. And I should have been a fool. It was too soon—too hasty. Anyway, she would not give me the smallest opening. And afterwards—' He paused. His mind passed to his night-wandering in the garden, to the strange breaking of the terra-cotta. Furtively his gaze examined Eleanor's face. But what he saw of it told him nothing, and again his instinct warned him to let sleeping dogs lie. 'Afterwards I thought things over, naturally. And I determined, that night, as I have already said, to come to you and take counsel with you. I saw you were out of charity with me. And, goodness knows, there was not much to be said for me! But at any rate I thought that we, who had been such old friends, had better understand each other; that you'd help me if I asked you. You'd never yet refused, anyway.'