He just hesitated. "Where is it?"

"Oh quite out of _your_ way. You'd never have time."

"But I tell you I'd go anywhere. Don't you believe it?"

"Yes, for once or twice. But you'd soon see it wouldn't do for you."

He smoked and considered; seemed to stretch himself a little and, with
his legs out, surrender himself comfortably. "Well, well, well--I
believe everything you say. I take it from you--anything you like--in
the most extraordinary way." It struck her certainly--and almost without
bitterness--that the way in which she was already, as if she had been an
old friend, arranging for him and preparing the only magnificence she
could muster, was quite the most extraordinary. "Don't, _don't_ go!" he
presently went on. "I shall miss you too horribly!"

"So that you just put it to me as a definite request?"--oh how she tried
to divest this of all sound of the hardness of bargaining! That ought to
have been easy enough, for what was she arranging to get? Before he
could answer she had continued: "To be perfectly fair I should tell you I
recognise at Cocker's certain strong attractions. All you people come. I
like all the horrors."

"The horrors?"

"Those you all--you know the set I mean, _your_ set--show me with as good
a conscience as if I had no more feeling than a letter-box."