"Oh," she murmured. "Do you think it is self-sacrifice for me to give myself to you? It's self-glorification! You don't understand—I haven't told you what I mean, or else I've told it in such a way that I've made it hateful to you. Do you think I don't care for you except to be something to you? I'm not so generous as that. You are all the world to me. If I take myself back from you, as you say, what shall I do with myself?"
"Has it come to that?" asked Colville. He sat down again with her, and this time he put his arm around her and drew her to him, but it seemed to him he did it as if she were his child. "I was going to tell you just now that each of us lived to himself in this world, and that no one could hope to enter into the life of another and complete it. But now I see that I was partly wrong. We two are bound together, Imogene, and whether we become all in all or nothing to each other, we can have no separate fate."
The girl's eyes kindled with rapture. "Then let us never speak of it again. I was going to say something, but now I won't say it."
"Yes, say it."
"No; it will make you think that I am anxious on my own account about appearances before people."
"You poor child, I shall never think you are anxious on your own account about anything. What were you going to say?"
"Oh, nothing! It was only—are you invited to the Phillipses' fancy ball?"
"Yes," said Colville, silently making what he could of the diversion, "I believe so."
"And are you going—did you mean to go?" she asked timidly.
"Good heavens, no! What in the world should I do at another fancy ball? I walked about with the airy grace of a bull in a china shop at the last one."