"If there were more there would be too many to convey the impression in which half the beauty resides—the impression, somehow, of something dreamed and missed, something reduced, relinquished, resigned: the poetry, as it were, of something sensibly gone." Fleda ingeniously and triumphantly worked it out. "Ah, there's something here that will never be in the inventory!" In the full face of what she was keeping back such a hope could only make her wince; but she was prompt with her explanations in proportion as she felt they failed to meet him. The smutty maid came in with tea-things, and Fleda, moving several objects, eagerly accepted the diversion of arranging a place for them on one of the tables. "I've been trying to break your mother down because it has seemed there may be some chance of it. That's why I've let you go on expecting it. She's too proud to veer round all at once, but I think I speak correctly in saying that I've made an impression."!

This was a transaction that Fleda, after a moment, had to give up trying to represent to herself. "If she won't do that—?" she went on. "Not a whisper, not a step, in all the eight days. Perhaps they don't know. Perhaps they're crouching for a leap."

"And do you say you love her?" "I see you think she may refuse to discuss it at all," said Owen. "Well, if she calls you names."