might, if he chose, or mightn't, make Jane, on his return, sit up to. Truths, these, that for our interest in him, or for our grasp of them, press on us in succession, but that within his breast were quick and simultaneous; so that it was virtually without a wait he heard her go on. "Do try—that's really all I want to say—to keep hold of my husband."
"Your husband—?" He did gape.
She had the oddest charming surprise—her nearest approach to familiarity. "Walter Puddick. Don't you know I'm married?" And then, as for the life of him he still couldn't but stare: "Hasn't he told you?"
"Told us? Why, we haven't seen him—"
"Since the day you so put the case to him? Oh, I should have supposed—!" She would have supposed, obviously, that he might in some way have communicated the fact; but she clearly hadn't so much as assured herself of it. "Then there exactly he is—he doesn't seem, poor dear, to know what to do." And she had on his behalf, apparently, a moment of beautiful, anxious, yet at the same time detached and all momentary thought. "That's just then what I mean."
"My dear child," Traffle gasped, "what on earth do you mean?"
"Well"—and she dropped for an instant comparatively to within his reach—"that it's where you can come in. Where in fact, as I say, I quite wish you would!"
