"There's something very dear to me in that," he answered. "You—yes, you can make me forget it."
There was a pause, and Romney laughed. "I show you things I never could show any one before," he said. "Why, a man doesn't talk of such compunctions. I think we go about the world without telling each other—I mean the men we meet—any more than the foam of reality. A man's woman takes everything—"
"A man's woman," she repeated. "There's something primitive in that—and something that is ahead, too.... I don't know exactly what thrilled me so last night as I ran after you. I believe that the patience and wonder of your staying and coming to the court each night had something to do with that primitive thing which 'a man's woman' suggests.... And also with the big stories of men and women as they will be lived in the future. The wonder does not pass. The thought was with me all night—as I watched near you. It made me want to ask something else—"
"What—?"
"It may make me seem less to you—"
"That cannot be."
"I never thought I would feel like this—but I seem to feel her about you—some woman you must have loved greatly—"
12
Romney forgot the Gobi. Rarely were they altogether out of its influence in Nadiram and this room, but the story that was called stirred him to the old beat of the world. He felt distantly as he had during his tests in the house of Minglapo. This killed out instantly any idea of policy. The truth was all he knew, but the truth here was a different affair from dealing with Chinese who might take or leave what he had to offer according to their whim. Here was a tense face of a woman who had crushed her pride to ask such a question.... He told her how the big devils and virtues had opened in him from the encounter with Moira Kelvin, what he had been before the meeting on the deck of the Sungkiang—and what he had been since.
He told her in ten minutes how he had cast all into the Great Drift, and had been spared in spite of himself—how the thrall of Moira Kelvin had gone out of his heart, and how he had met her again in the presence of her mate.