it too with the greater ease to himself as there wasn't
one of her divinations that as her own he would
in any way put himself out for. Finally, if he was
making her talk she was talking; and what it could,
at any rate, come to for him was that she wasn't
afraid. If he wanted to do the dearest thing in the
world for her he would show her he believed she
wasn t; which undertaking of hers not to have
misled him was what she counted at the moment
as her presumptuous little hint to him that she was
as good as himself. It put forward the bold idea
that he could really be misled; and there actually
passed between them for some seconds a sign, a sign
of the eyes only, that they knew together where they
were. This made, in their brown old temple of
truth, its momentary flicker; then what followed it
was that he had her, all the same, in his pocket; and
the whole thing wound up, for that consummation,
with its kind dim smile. Such kindness was won
derful with such dimness; but brightness that even
of sharp steel was of course for the other side of
the business, and it would all come in for her in
one way or another. " Do you mean," he asked,
"that you ve no relations at all? not a parent, not
a sister, not even a cousin nor an aunt?"

She shook her head as with the easy habit of an
interviewed heroine or a freak of nature at a show.
"Nobody whatever." But the last thing she had
come for was to be dreary about it. " I'm a sur
vivor a survivor of a general wreck. You see,"

[[264]]

p263 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p264w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p265

v?