from the beginning, the greatest pull for me.”  Nothing so much as such a tone could have quickened her collapse; she felt he had her now at his mercy, and he showed, as he went on, that he knew it.  “We shall talk again, all the same, better than ever—­I depend on it too much.  Don’t you remember what I told you, so definitely, one day before my marriage?—­that, moving as I did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions, expectations, assumptions different from any I had known, I looked to you, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through.  I beg you to believe,” he added, “that I look to you yet.”

His very insistence had, fortunately, the next moment, affected her as bringing her help; with which, at least, she could hold up her head to speak.  “Ah, you are through—­you were through long ago.  Or if you aren’t you ought to be.”

“Well then, if I ought to be it’s all the more reason why you should continue to help me.  Because, very distinctly, I assure you, I’m not.  The new things or ever so many of them—­are still for me new things; the mysteries and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense element that I’ve failed to puzzle out.  As we’ve happened, so luckily, to find ourselves again really taking hold together, you must let me, as soon as possible, come to see you; you must give me a good, kind hour.  If you refuse it me”—­and he addressed himself to her continued reserve—­“I shall feel that you deny, with a stony stare, your responsibility.”

At this, as from a sudden shake, her reserve proved an inadequate vessel.  She could bear her own, her private reference to the weight on her mind, but the touch of another hand made it too horribly press.  “Oh, I deny responsibility—­to you.  So far as I ever had it I’ve done with it.”

He had been, all the while, beautifully smiling; but she made his look, now, penetrate her again more.  “As to whom then do you confess it?”

“Ah, mio caro, that’s—­if to anyone—­my own business!”

He continued to look at her hard.  “You give me up then?”

It was what Charlotte had asked her ten minutes before, and its coming from him so much in the same way shook her in her place.  She was on the point of replying “Do you and she agree together for what you’ll say to me?”—­but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time, little as her actual answer had perhaps bettered it.  “I think I don’t know what to make of you.”

“You must receive me at least,” he said.

“Oh, please, not till I’m ready for you!”—­and, though she found a laugh for it, she had to turn away.  She had never turned away from him before, and it was quite positively for her as if she were altogether afraid of him.

XVI