"Oh no. For only thinking of it—for only thinking of it. But you would think of it; I always knew you'd be like that.... Now ask me anything you like. Anything you like. Only don't ask Derry. It made"—for an instant only there was the slightest tremor in her voice—"it made no difference to him."
What, as she had said, was our relation? Had he "got us going"? Had he subdued all our standards to his own standardlessness? Had he withdrawn some linchpin of ordinary conduct from the wheel on which the whole world revolves? I didn't know. I don't know now. The more I think of it the less I know. I only know what I did. Her affairs were her affairs, and I have ado enough to look after my own. I took one of her cool hands in mine, bowed as low over it as if she had been a queen, and kissed it.
Her other hand rested lightly for a moment on my head as I did so.
"And now," she resumed in her ordinary tones, "about him."
He was sitting alone in the punt, some forty yards away, gazing straight before him. He had ceased to paddle, the water had ceased to drip from his resting blade. It accentuated his isolation that for two whole days he had hardly left her side. Restlessness and impatience plainly possessed him. He was straining to be off. It would not have surprised me to see him suddenly thrust the paddle in, swirl across the lake, tie up the punt, walk straight up to me, hold out his hand, and say, "George, old man, it's no good—I've got to go this moment." I turned to Julia.
"If he leaves shall you go with him?" I asked.
"Leaves here? This house? To-day?"
"I didn't mean that."
"You mean if he buckles on his knapsack again?"
"If that's the next stage."