"
It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. "It
seems to me surely that if her mother can't--"
"Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!" she rather inconsequently
broke in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to give
out as after all more to the point. "Tell her I've been good for
him. Don't you think I have?"
It had its effect on him--more than at the moment he quite measured.
Yet he was consciously enough touched. "Oh if it's all you--!"
"Well, it may not be 'all,'" she interrupted, "but it's to a great
extent. Really and truly," she added in a tone that was to take its
place with him among things remembered.
"Then it's very wonderful." He smiled at her from a face that he
felt as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At
last she also got up. "Well, don't you think that for that--"
"I ought to save you?" So it was that the way to meet her--and the
way, as well, in a manner, to get off--came over him. He heard
himself use the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to
determine his flight. "I'll save you if I can."
II
In Chad's lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt
himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet's
shy secret.
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