She was on the point, at this, of imitating with her hand his movement of shortly before; but she checked herself, and there was no want of effect in her soothing substitute.  “How can you?  How can you?” He had, too manifestly, only to look at it there, in the vulgarly animated gloom, to see that he couldn’t; and at this point, by the mere action of his silence, everything they had so definitely not named, the whole presence round which they had been circling, became part of their reference, settled in solidly between them.  It was as if then for a minute they sat and saw it all in each other’s eyes, saw so much that there was no need of a pretext for sounding it at last.  “Your danger, your danger—!” Her voice indeed trembled with it, and she could only for the moment again leave it so.

During this moment he leaned back on the bench, meeting her in silence and with a face that grew more strange.  It grew so strange that after a further instant she got straight up.  She stood there as if their talk were now over, and he just sat and watched her.  It was as if now—­owing to the third person they had brought in—­they must be more careful; so that the most he could finally say was:  “That’s where it is!”

“That’s where it is!” the girl as guardedly replied.  He sat still, and she added:  “I won’t give you up.  Good-bye.”

“Good-bye?”—­he appealed, but without moving.

“I don’t quite see my way, but I won’t give you up,” she repeated.  “There.  Good-bye.”

It brought him with a jerk to his feet, tossing away his cigarette.  His poor face was flushed.  “See here—­see here!”

“No, I won’t; but I must leave you now,” she went on as if not hearing him.

“See here—­see here!” He tried, from the bench, to take her hand again.

But that definitely settled it for her:  this would, after all, be as bad as his asking her to supper.  “You mustn’t come with me—­no, no!”

He sank back, quite blank, as if she had pushed him.  “I mayn’t see you home?”

“No, no; let me go.”  He looked almost as if she had struck him, but she didn’t care; and the manner in which she spoke—­it was literally as if she were angry—­had the force of a command.  “Stay where you are!”

“See here—­see here!” he nevertheless pleaded.

“I won’t give you up!” she cried once more—­this time quite with passion; on which she got away from him as fast as she could and left him staring after her.

CHAPTER XVIII

Mr. Mudge had lately been so occupied with their famous “plans” that he had neglected for a while the question of her transfer; but down at Bournemouth, which had found itself selected as the field of their recreation by a process consisting, it seemed, exclusively of innumerable pages of the neatest arithmetic in a very greasy but most orderly little pocket-book, the distracting possible melted away—­the