 - almost - in my drawing-room.«
    Acton stopped in the road, with a movement which seemed to beg her to linger
a little. She paused, and he looked at her awhile; he thought her very charming.
»You are jesting,« he said; »but if you are really going away it is very
serious.«
    »If I stay,« and she gave a little laugh, »it is more serious still!«
    »When shall you go?«
    »As soon as possible.«
    »And why?«
    »Why should I stay?«
    »Because we all admire you so.«
    »That is not a reason. I am admired also in Europe.« And she began to walk
homeward again.
    »What could I say to keep you?« asked Acton. He wanted to keep her, and it
was a fact that he had been thinking of her for a week. He was in love with her
now; he was conscious of that, or he thought he was; and the only question with
him was whether he could trust her.
    »What you can say to keep me?« she repeated. »As I want very much to go it
is not in my interest to tell you. Besides, I can't imagine.«
    He went on with her in silence; he was much more affected by what she had
told him than appeared. Ever since that evening of his return from Newport her
image had had a terrible power to trouble him. What Clifford Wentworth had told
him - that had affected him, too, in an adverse sense; but it had not liberated
him from the discomfort of a charm of which his intelligence was impatient. »She
is not honest, she is not honest,« he kept murmuring to himself. That is what he
had been saying to the summer sky, ten minutes before. Unfortunately, he was
unable to say it finally, definitively; and now that he was near her it seemed
to matter wonderfully little. »She is a woman who will lie,« he had said to
himself. Now, as he went along, he reminded himself of this observation; but it
failed to frighten him as it had done before. He almost wished he could make her
lie and then convict her of it, so that he might see how he should like that. He
kept thinking of this as he walked by her side, while she moved forward with her
light, graceful dignity. He had sat with her before; he had driven with her; but
