THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
for that there are difficulties. But there is that." He stood before her with his hands in his pockets, and he had soon enough, from her eyes, seen what was coming. She paused as if waiting for his leave to utter it, and, as he only let her wait, they heard, in the silence, on the Canal, the renewed downpour of rain. She had at last to speak, but, as if still with her fear, she only half spoke. "I think you really know yourself what it is."
He did know what it was, and with it even, as she said—rather!—there were difficulties. He turned away on them, on everything, for a moment; he moved to the other window and looked at the sheeted channel, wider, like a river, where the houses opposite, blurred and belittled, stood at twice their distance. Mrs. Stringham said nothing, was as mute, in fact, for the minute as if she had "had" him, and he was the first again to speak. When he did so, however, it was not in straight answer to her last remark—he only started from that. He said, as he came back to her, "Let me, you know, see—one must understand," almost as if, for the time, he had accepted it. And what he wished to understand was where, on the essence of the question, was the voice of Sir Luke Strett. If they talked of not giving her up shouldn't he be the one least of all to do it? "Aren't we, at the worst, in the dark without him?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Stringham, "it's he who has kept me going. I wired the first night, and he an-
303
