"He ll find you both here, and he can hardly be
looked to, I take it, to cut either of you for the
sake of the other."

This placed the question at last on a basis more
distinctly cheerful. " I might get at him somehow
beforehand," the girl suggested; " I might give him
what they call here the tip that he's not to know
me when we meet. Or, better still, I mightn't be
here at all."

"Do you want to run away from him?"

It was, oddly enough, an idea Milly seemed half
to accept. " I don't know what I want to run away
from!"

It dispelled, on the spot something, to the elder
woman's ear, in the sad, sweet sound of it any
ghost of any need of explaining. The sense was
constant for her that their relation was as if afloat,
like some island of the south, in a great warm sea
that made, for every conceivable chance, a margin,
an outer sphere of general emotion; and the effect
of the occurrence of anything in particular was to
make the sea submerge the island, the margin flood
the text. The great wave now for a moment swept
over. " I ll go anywhere else in the world you
like."

But Milly came up through it. " Dear old Susie
how I do work you!"

"Oh, this is nothing yet."

"No indeed to what it will be."

"You re not and it's vain to pretend," said dear

[[219]]

p218 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p219w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p220

v?