But the effect of their silence was that she appeared to beckon him on, and he might have been fairly alongside of her when, at the end of another minute, he found their word.

"The only thing is that, as for ever putting up again with your pretending that you're selfish--!" At this she helped him out with it.

"You won't take it from me ?" "I won't take it from you." "Well, of course you won't, for that's your way.

It doesn't matter, and it only proves--! But it doesn't matter, either, what it proves.

I'm at this very moment," she declared, "frozen stiff with selfishness." He faced her awhile longer in the same way; it was, strangely, as if, by this sudden arrest, by their having, in their acceptance of the unsaid, or at least their reference to it, practically given up pretending--it was as if they were "in" for it, for something they had been ineffably avoiding, but the dread of which was itself, in a manner, a seduction, just as any confession of the dread was by so much an allusion.