you think it's to people of that kind that I'll ever consent to give
you up?"

She raised a half-smiling glance of protest. "Oh, they're not
wantonly wicked. They'll leave me alone as long as--"

"As I do?" he interrupted. "Do you want me to leave you alone? Was
that what you brought me here to tell me?"

The directness of the challenge seemed to gather up the scattered
strands of her hesitation, and lifting her head she turned on him a
look in which, but for its underlying shadow, he might have
recovered the full free beam of Fanny Frisbee's gaze.

"I don't know why I brought you here," she said gently, "except from
the wish to prolong a little the illusion of being once more an
American among Americans. Just now, sitting there with your mother
and Katy and Nannie, the difficulties seemed to vanish; the problems
grew as trivial to me as they are to you. And I wanted them to
remain so a little longer; I wanted to put off going back to them.
But it was of no use--they were waiting for me here. They are over
there now in that house across the river." She indicated the grey
sky-line of the Faubourg, shining in the splintered radiance of the
sunset beyond the long sweep of the quays. "They are a part of me--I
belong to them. I must go back to them!" she sighed.

She rose slowly to her feet, as though her metaphor had expressed an
actual fact and she felt herself bodily drawn from his side by the
influences of which she spoke.