“I am afraid I shall have to see less of you,” she had begun by saying. “They watch me so much.” “It is very little already,” he answered. “What is once or twice a week?” “That’s easy for you to say. You are your own master, but you don’t know what I go through.” “Do they make it very bad for you, dearest? Do they make scenes?” Benyon asked. “No, of course not. Don’t you know us enough to know how we behave? No scenes,--that would be a relief. However, I never make them myself, and I never will--that’s one comfort for you, for the future, if you want to know. Father and mother keep very quiet, looking at me as if I were one of the lost, with hard, screwing eyes, like gimlets. To me they scarcely say anything, but they talk it all over with each other, and try and decide what is to be done. It’s my belief that father has written to the people in Washington--what do you call it! the Department--to have you moved away from Brooklyn,--to have you sent to sea.” “I guess that won’t do much good. They want me in Brooklyn, they don’t want me at sea.” “Well, they are capable of going to Europe for a year, on purpose to take me,” Geoigina said. “How can they take you, if you won’t go? And if you should go, what good would it do, if you were only to find me here when you came back, just the same as you left me?” “Oh, well!” said Georgina, with her lovely smile, “of course they think that absence would cure me of--cure me of--” And she paused, with a certain natural modesty, not saying exactly of what. “Cure you of what, darling? Say it, please say it,” the young man murmured, drawing her hand surreptitiously into his arm. “Of my absurd infatuation!” “And would it, dearest?” “Yes, very likely. But I don’t mean to try. I sha’n’t go to Europe,--not when I don’t want to. But it’s better I should see less of you,--even that I should appear--a little--to give you up.” “A little? What do you call a little?” Georgina said nothing, for a moment. “Well, that, for instance, you should n’t hold my hand quite so tight!” And she disengaged this conscious member from the pressure of his arm. “What good will that do?” Benyon asked, “It will make them think it ‘s all over,--that we have agreed to part.” “And as we have done nothing of the kind, how will that help us?” They had stopped at the crossing of a street; a heavy dray was lumbering slowly past them. Georgina, as she stood there, turned her face to her lover, and rested her eyes for some moments on his own. At last: “Nothing will help us; I don’t think we are very happy,” she answered, while her strange, ironical, inconsequent smile played about her beautiful lips. “I don’t understand how you see things. I thought you were going to say you would marry me!” Benyon rejoined, standing there still, though the dray had passed.