KIPPS
She glanced up again and shook her head.
"But—for instance—you don't think of me—as an equal like."
"Why not?"
"Oo! But reely———"
His heart beat very fast.
"If I thought," he said; and then, "you know so much."
"That's nothing," she said.
Then for a long time, as it seemed to them, both kept silence, a silence that said and accomplished many things.
"I know what I am," he said at length. . . . "If I thought it was possible. . . if I thought you. . . I believe I could do anything———"
He stopped, and she sat downcast and strikingly still.
"Miss Walshingham," he said, "is it possible that you. . . could care for me enough to—to 'elp me? Miss Walshingham, do you care for me at all?"
It seemed she was never going to answer. She looked up at him. "I think," she said, "you are the most generous—look at what you have done for my brother!—the most generous and the most modest of men. And this afternoon—I thought you were the bravest."
She turned her head, glanced down, waved her hand to someone on the terrace below, and stood up.
"Mother is signalling," she said. "We must go down."
Kipps became polite and deferential by habit, but his mind was a tumult that had nothing to do with that.
214
