“Well, if you went, for six months, say, or even three, nobody’d be able to say after that that you didn’t know all about it.”
“No,” Cosimo replied.
“The stupid people go. Why not the people with eyes and minds?”
“Exactly,” said Cosimo, resuming his walk.
Then, as if he had been a mere you or a simple me, the beauty of the idea did begin to work a little in him. He walked for a space longer, and then, turning, said almost with joy, “I say, Amory—would you like to go?”
But Amory did not look up from the slippered foot she had again begun to warm.—“Oh, I shouldn’t go,” she said absently.
“You mean me to go by myself?” said Cosimo, the joy vanishing again.
Then it was that Amory returned to the temporarily relinquished subject again.
“Well ...”, she said, with a return of the quiet and wan but brave smile, “... I’ve nothing to do with that. I shouldn’t set detectives to watch you. I was speaking for the moment purely from the point of view of the ‘Novum’s’ policy.—But I see what you mean.”