Words came from him, a jumble of words. About his hopes, the few thousand dollars that would be his on the seventh of November, when he would be twenty-one, the wonderful stories he would write, with her for inspiration.
Inwardly he was in a panic. He hadn't dreamed of saying such a thing. Never before, in all his little philanderings had he let go like this, never had he felt the glow of mad catastrophe that now seemed to be consuming him. Oh, once perhaps—something of it—years back—when he had believed he was in love with Ernestine Lambert. But that had been in another era. And it hadn't gone so deep as this.
'Anyway'—he heard her saying, in a rather tired voice—'anyway—it makes it hard, of course—you shouldn't have said that—'
'Oh, I am making it hard! And I meant to——'
'—anyway, I think you'd better come. Unless it would be too hard for you.'
There was a long silence. Then Henry, his forehead wet with sweat, his feet braced apart, his hands gripping the rail as if he were holding for his life, said, with a sudden quiet that she found a little disconcerting:—
'All right. I'll come.... Your aunt said a quarter past six, didn't she?'
'No, six.'
5
Madame Watt appropriated Henry the moment he entered her door on Saturday evening. She was, despite her talk of offhand summer informality, clad in an impressive costume with a great deal of lace and the shimmer of flowered silk.