Nothing would have induced her, however, to encourage him; she was now conscious of having never in her life stood so still or sat, inwardly, as it were, so tight; she felt like the horse of the adage, brought--and brought by her own fault--to the water, but strong, for the occasion, in the one fact that she couldn't be forced to drink.

Invited, in other words, to understand, she held her breath for fear of showing she did, and this for the excellent reason that she was at last fairly afraid to.

It was sharp for her, at the same time, that she was certain, in advance, of his remark; that she heard it before it had sounded, that she already tasted, in fine, the bitterness it would have for her special sensibility.

But her companion, from an inward and different need of his own, was presently not deterred by her silence.

"What I really don't see is why, from his own point of view--given, that is, his conditions, so fortunate as they stood--he should have wished to marry at all." There it was then--exactly what she knew would come, and exactly, for reasons that seemed now to thump at her heart, as distressing to her.