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She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not to be that of mockery.”Isn’t what you describe perhaps but the expectation–or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so many people–of falling in love?”

John Marcher thought.”Did you ask me that before?”

“No–I wasn’t so free-and-easy then. But it’s what strikes me now.”

“Of course,” he said after a moment, “it strikes you. Of course it strikes me. Of course what’s in store for me may be no more than that. The only thing is,” he went on, “that I think if it had been that I should by this time know.”

“Do you mean because you’ve beenin love?”And then as he but looked at her in silence:”You’ve been in love, and it hasn’t meant such a cataclysm, hasn’t proved the great affair?”

“Here I am, you see. It hasn’t been overwhelming.”

“Then it hasn’t been love,” said May Bartram.

“Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that–I’ve taken it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful, it was miserable,” he explained.”But it wasn’t strange. It wasn’t what my affair’s to be.”

“You want something all to yourself–something that nobody else knows or hasknown?”

“It isn’t a question of what I ‘want’–God knows I don’t want anything. It’s only a question of the apprehension that haunts me- -that I live with day by day.”

He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it further impose itself. If she hadn’t been interested before she’d have been interested now.

“Is it a sense of coming violence?”

Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it.”I don’t think of it as–when it does come–necessarily violent. I only think of it as natural and as of course above all unmistakeable. I think of it simply as thething. Thething will of itself appear natural.”

“Then how will it appear strange?”

Marcher bethought himself.”It won’t–to me.”

“To whom then?”

“Well,” he replied, smiling at last, “say to you.”

“Oh then I’m to be present?”

“Why you are present–since you know.”

“I see.”She turned it over.”But I mean at the catastrophe.”

At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity; it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together.”It will only depend on yourself–if you’ll watch with me.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

“Don’t leave me now,” he went on.

“Are you afraid?” she repeated.

“Do you think me simply out of my mind?” he pursued instead of answering.”Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?”

“No,” said May Bartram.”I understand you. I believe you.”

“You mean you feel how my obsession–poor old thing–may correspond to some possible reality?”

“To some possible reality.”

“Then you willwatch with me?”

She hesitated, then for the third time put her question.”Are you afraid?”

“Did I tell you I was–at Naples?”

“No, you said nothing about it.”

“Then I don’t know. And I should like to know,” said John Marcher.”You’ll tell me yourself whether you think so. If you’ll watch with me you’ll see.”

“Very good then.”They had been moving by this time across the room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused as for the full wind-up of their understanding.”I’ll watch with you,” said May Bartram.

II

The fact that she “knew”–knew and yet neither chaffed him nor betrayed him–had in a short time begun to constitute between them a goodly bond, which became more marked when, within the year that followed their afternoon at Weatherend, the opportunities for meeting multiplied. The event that thus promoted these occasions was the death of the ancient lady her great-aunt, under whose wing, since losing her mother, she had to such an extent found shelter, and who, though but the widowed mother of the new successor to the property, had succeeded–thanks to a high tone and a high temper– in not forfeiting the supreme position at the great house. The deposition of this personage arrived but with her death, which, followed by many changes, made in particular a difference for the young woman in whom Marcher’s expert attention had recognised from the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn’t bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss Bartram’s now finding herself able to set up a small home in London. She had acquired property, to an amount that made that luxury just possible, under her aunt’s extremely complicated will, and when the whole matter began to be straightened out, which indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was at last in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because she had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made of Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These friends had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with Mss Bartram some quiet detachment; and he had in London succeeded in persuading her to more than one brief absence from her aunt. They went together, on these latter occasions, to the National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum, where, among vivid reminders, they talked of Italy at large–not now attempting to recover, as at first, the taste of their youth and their ignorance. That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had served its purpose well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to Marcher’s sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of their stream, but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current.