»But if you've completely ceased to be that sort –?«

»Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I have n't.«

»Perhaps. Yet if you have n't,« she added, »I should suppose you'd remember. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you foolish,« she explained, »the thing I speak of would n't so have remained with me. It was about yourself.« She waited as if it might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave no sign, she burnt her ships. »Has it ever happened?«

Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with recognition. »Do you mean I told you –?« But he faltered, lest what came to him should n't be right, lest he should only give himself away.

»It was something about yourself that it was natural one should n't forget – that is if one remembered you at all. That's why I ask you,« she smiled, »if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to pass?«

Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her allusion had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to feel it had n't been, much as it had been a surprise. After the first little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, to taste sweet to him. She was the only other person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his having so breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him. No wonder they could n't have met as if nothing had happened. »I judge,« he finally said, »that I know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense of having taken you so far into my confidence.«

»Is it because you've taken so many others as well?«

»I've taken nobody. Not a creature since then.«

»So that I'm the only person who knows?«

»The only person in the world.«

»Well,« she quickly replied, »I myself have never spoken. I've never, never repeated of you what you told me.« She looked at him so that he perfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such a way that he was without a doubt. »And I never will.«

She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him at ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question was a new luxury to him – that is from the moment she was in possession. If she did n't take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sympathetic, and that was what he had had, in all the long time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he could n't at present have begun to tell her, and yet could profit perhaps exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old. »Please don't then. We're just right as it is.«

»Oh I am,« she laughed, »if you are!« To which she added: »Then you do still feel in the same way?«

It was impossible he should n't take to himself that she was really interested, though it all kept coming as perfect surprise. He had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he was n't alone a bit. He had n't been, it appeared, for an hour – since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been, he seemed to see as he looked at her – she who had been made so by the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he had told her – what had it been but to ask something of her? something that she had given, in her charity, without his having, by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had been simply at first not to laugh at him.