The force of it had brought her to her feet, but he sat there smiling
up as at the natural tribute of her interest. "I tell you before any
one else; it's not to be 'out' for a day or two yet. But we want you
to know; _she_ said that as soon as I mentioned to her that I had
heard from you. I mention to her everything, you see!"--and he almost
simpered while, still in his seat, he held the end of his cigarette,
all delicately and as for a form of gentle emphasis, with the tips
of his fine fingers. "You've not met her, Mary Lindeck, I think: she
tells me she hasn't the pleasure of knowing you, but she desires it so
much--particularly longs for it. She'll take an interest too," he went
on; "you must let me immediately bring her to you. She has heard so
much about you and she really wants to see you."

"Oh mercy _me_!" poor Julia gasped again--so strangely did history
repeat itself and so did this appear the echo, on Murray Brush's lips,
and quite to drollery, of that sympathetic curiosity of Mrs. Drack's
which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played
before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide;
but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of
waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin.
It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect
benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his
posture--as if to show he could patronize her from below upward quite
as well as from above down. And as she took it all in, as it spread to
a flood, with the great lumps and masses of truth it was floating, she
knew inevitable submission, not to say submersion, as she had never
known it in her life; going down and down before it, not even putting
out her hands to resist or cling by the way, only reading into the
young man's very face an immense fatality and, for all his bright
nobleness his absence of rancor or of protesting pride, the great gray