hand into which he had crumpled his gloves. "Yes," he assented, "it's
not a bit horrid or vulgar."

She just hung fire a moment, then she brought out the whole truth. "I'd
do anything for you. I'd do anything for you." Never in her life had
she known anything so high and fine as this, just letting him have it and
bravely and magnificently leaving it. Didn't the place, the associations
and circumstances, perfectly make it sound what it wasn't? and wasn't
that exactly the beauty?

So she bravely and magnificently left it, and little by little she felt
him take it up, take it down, as if they had been on a satin sofa in a
boudoir. She had never seen a boudoir, but there had been lots of
boudoirs in the telegrams. What she had said at all events sank into
him, so that after a minute he simply made a movement that had the result
of placing his hand on her own--presently indeed that of her feeling
herself firmly enough grasped. There was no pressure she need return,
there was none she need decline; she just sat admirably still, satisfied
for the time with the surprise and bewilderment of the impression she
made on him. His agitation was even greater on the whole than she had at
first allowed for. "I say, you know, you mustn't think of leaving!" he
at last broke out.

"Of leaving Cocker's, you mean?"

"Yes, you must stay on there, whatever happens, and help a fellow."

She was silent a little, partly because it was so strange and exquisite
to feel him watch her as if it really mattered to him and he were almost
in suspense. "Then you _have_ quite recognised what I've tried to do?"