I've been coming ever since we left Fawns--I really started while we were there." He spoke slowly, giving her, as he desired, time to think; all the more that it was making her look at him steadily, and making her also, in a remarkable degree, look "well" while she did so--a large and so far a happy consequence. She was n't at all events shocked--which he had glanced at but for a handsome humility--and he would give her as many minutes as she liked. "You must n't think I'm forgetting that I'm not young."
"Oh that isn't so. It's I who am old. You ARE young." This was what she had at first answered--and quite in the tone too of having taken her minutes. It had n't been wholly to the point, but it had been kind--which was what he most wanted. And she kept, for her next words, to kindness, kept to her clear lowered voice and unshrinking face. "To me too it thoroughly seems that these days have been beautiful. I should n't be grateful to them if I could n't more or less have imagined their bringing us to this."
She affected him somehow as if she had advanced a step to meet him and yet were at the same time standing still. It only meant, however, doubtless, that she was gravely and reasonably thinking--as he exactly desired to make her. If she would but think enough she (219) would probably think to suit him. "It seems to me," she went on, "that it's for YOU to be sure."
"Ah but I AM sure," said Adam Verver. "On matters of importance I never speak when I'm not. So if you can yourself face such a union you need n't in the least trouble."
She had another pause, and she might have been felt as facing it while, through lamplight and dusk, through the breath of the mild slightly damp south-west, she met his eyes without evasion. Yet she had at the end of another minute debated only to the extent of saying: "I won't pretend I don't think it would be good for me to marry. Good for me, I mean," she pursued, "because I'm so awfully unattached. I should like to be a little less adrift. I should like to have a home. I should like to have an existence.
I should like to have a motive for one thing more than another--a motive outside of myself. In fact," she said, so sincerely that it almost showed pain, yet so lucidly that it almost showed humour, "in fact, you know, I want to BE married. It's--well, it's the condition."
"The condition--?" He was just vague.
"It's the state, I mean. I don't like my own, 'Miss,' among us all, is too dreadful--except for a shopgirl. I don't want to be a horrible English old-maid."
"Oh you want to be taken care of. Very well then I'll do it."
"I dare say it's very much that. Only I don't see why, for what I speak of," she smiled--"for a mere escape from my state--I need do quite so MUCH."
(220) "So much as marry me in particular?"
Her smile was as for true directness. "I might get what I want for less."
"You think it's so much for you to do?"
"Yes," she presently said, "I think it's a great deal."
Then it was that, though she was so gentle, so quite perfect with him, and he felt he had come on far--then it was that of a sudden something seemed to fail and he did n't quite know where they were. There rose for him with this the fact, to be sure, of their disparity, ignore it as mercifully and perversely as she would. He might have been her father. "Of course, yes--that's my disadvantage: I'm not the natural, I'm so far from being the ideal, match to your youth and your beauty. I've the drawback that you've seen me always, and so inevitably, in such another light."
But she gave a slow headshake that made contradiction soft--made it almost sad, in fact, as from having to be so complete; and he had already, before she spoke, the dim vision of some objection in her mind beside which the one he had named was light, and which therefore must be strangely deep.
"You don't understand me. It's of all that it is for YOU to do--it's of that I'm thinking."
Oh with this for him the thing was clearer! "Then you need n't think.
I know enough what it is for me to do."
But she shook her head again. "I doubt if you know. I doubt if you CAN."
"And why not, please--when I've had you so (221) before me? That I'm old has at least THAT fact about it to the good--that I've known you long and from far back."
"Do you think you've 'known' me?" asked Charlotte Stant.
He debated--for the tone of it, and her look with it might have made him doubt. Just these things in themselves, however, with all the rest, with his fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine pink glow, projected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and crackling--this quantity was to push him harder than any word of her own could warn him.
A11 that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to its advantage, by the pink glow. He was n't rabid, but he was n't either, as a man of a proper spirit, to be frightened. "What is that then--if I accept it--but as strong a reason as I can want for just LEARNING to know you?"
She faced him always--kept it up as for honesty, and yet at the same time, in her odd way, as for mercy. "How can you tell whether if you did you would?" It was ambiguous for an instant, as she showed she felt. "I mean when it's a question of learning one learns sometimes too late."
"I think it's a question," he promptly enough made answer, "of liking you the more just for your saying these things. You should make something," he added, "of my liking you."
"I make everything. But are you sure of having exhausted all other ways?"
This of a truth enlarged his gaze. "But what other ways--?" (222) "Why you've more ways of being kind than any one I ever knew."
"Take it then," he answered, "that I'm simply putting them all together for you." She looked at him, on this, long again--still as if it should n't be said she had n't given him time or had withdrawn from his view, so to speak, a single inch of her surface. This at least she was fully to have exposed. It represented her as oddly conscientious, and he scarce knew in what sense it affected him. On the whole, however, with admiration.
"You're very, very honourable."