"Do you propose it seriously--without wishing to play me a trick?"
She wondered. "What trick would it be?"
He looked at her harder. "You mean you really don't know?"
"But know what?"
"Why what's the matter with it. You did n't see, all the while?"
She only continued however to stare. "How could you see--out in the street?"
"I saw before I went out. It was because I saw that I did go out. I did n't want to have another scene with you before that rascal, and I judged you'd presently guess for yourself."
"Is he a rascal?" Charlotte asked. "His price is so moderate." She waited but a moment. "Five pounds. Really so little."
He continued to look at her. "Five pounds?"
"Five pounds."
He might have been doubting her word, but he was only, it appeared, gathering emphasis. "It would be dear--to make a gift of--at five shillings.
If it had (119) cost you even but fivepence I would n't take it from you."
"Then," she asked, "what IS the matter?"
"Why it has a crack."
It sounded, on his lips, so sharp, it had such an authority, that she almost started, while her colour rose at the word. It was as if he had been right, though his assurance was wonderful. "You answer for it without having looked?"
"I did look. I saw the object itself. It told its story. No wonder it's cheap."
"But it's exquisite," Charlotte, as if with an interest in it now made even tenderer and stranger, found herself moved to insist.
"Of course it's exquisite. That's the danger."
Then a light visibly came to her--a light in which her friend suddenly and intensely showed. The reflexion of it, as she smiled at him, was in her own face. "The danger--I see--is because you're superstitious."
"Per Dio I'm superstitious! A crack's a crack--and an omen's an omen."
"You'd be afraid--?"
"Per Bacco!"
"For your happiness?"
"For my happiness."
"For your safety?"
"For my safety."
She just paused. "For your marriage?"
"For my marriage. For everything."
She thought again. "Thank goodness then that if there BE a crack we know it! But if we may perish by (120) cracks in things that we don't know--!"
And she smiled with the sadness of it. "We can never then give each other anything."
He considered, but he met it. "Ah but one does know. I do at least--and by instinct. I don't fail. That will always protect me."
It was droll, the way he said such things; yet she liked him really the more for it. They fell in for her with a general, or rather with a special, vision. But she spoke with a mild despair. "What then will protect ME?"
"Where I'm concerned I will. From me at least you've nothing to fear," he now quite amiably responded. "Anything you consent to accept from me--"
But he paused.
"Well?"
"Well, shall be perfect."
"That's very fine," she presently answered. "It's vain, after all, for you to talk of my accepting things when you'll accept nothing from me."
Ah THERE better still he could meet her. "You attach an impossible condition.
That, I mean, of my keeping your gift so to myself."
Well, she looked, before him there, at the condition--then abruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. She had a headshake of disenchantment--so far as the idea had appealed to her. It all appeared too difficult. "Oh my 'condition'--I don't hold to it. You may cry it on the housetops--anything I ever do."
"Ah well, then--!" This made, he laughed, all the difference.
(121) But it was too late. "Oh I don't care now! I SHOULD have liked the Bowl. But if that won't do there's nothing."
He considered this; he took it in, looking graver again; but after a moment he qualified. "Yet I shall want some day to give you something."
She wondered at him. "What day?"
"The day you marry. For you WILL marry. You MUST--seriously--marry."
She took it from him, but it determined in her the only words she was to have uttered, all the morning, that came out as if a spring had been pressed. "To make you feel better?"
"Well," he replied frankly, wonderfully--"it will. But here," he added, "is your hansom."
He had signalled--the cab was charging. She put out no hand for their separation, but she prepared to get in. Before she did so, however, she said what had been gathering while she waited. "Well, I would marry, I think, to have something from you in all freedom.