THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
thing in particular that, I understand, you regard as possible. Time too that, I further understand, is time for you as well."
"Time indeed for me as well." And, encouraged, visibly, by his glow of concentration, she looked at him as through the air she had painfully made clear. Yet she was still on her guard. "Don't think, however, I'll do all the work for you. If you want things named you must name them."
He had quite, within the minute, been turning names over; and there was only one, which at last stared at him there dreadful, that properly fitted. "Since she's to die I'm to marry her?"
It struck him even at the moment as fine in her that she met it with no wincing nor mincing. She might, for the grace of silence, for favour to their conditions, have only answered him with her eyes. But her lips bravely moved. "To marry her."
"So that when her death has taken place I shall in the natural course have money?"
It was before him enough now, and he had nothing more to ask; he had only to turn, on the spot, considerably cold with the thought that all along—to his stupidity, his timidity—it had been, it had been only what she meant. Now that he was in possession, moreover, she couldn't forbear, strangely enough, to pronounce the words she had not pronounced: they broke through her controlled and colourless voice as if she should be ashamed, to the very end, to have flinched. "You'll in the nat-
246
