Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow. “Ah, you can’t get off with that!” I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. “My dear, I don’t want to get off!” “You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!”—he lay beautifully staring. “My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle things.” “If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it will be to take you quite away.” “Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m working for? You’ll have to tell him—about the way you’ve let it all drop: you’ll have to tell him a tremendous lot!” The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the instant, to meet him rather more. “And how much will _you_, Miles, have to tell him? There are things he’ll ask you!” He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?” “The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with you. He can’t send you back—” “Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a new field.” He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles—!” My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?” “Is there nothing—nothing at all that you want to tell me?” He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. “I’ve told you—I told you this morning.” Oh, I was sorry for him! “That you just want me not to worry you?” He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; then ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied. There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. “I’ve just begun a letter to your uncle,” I said. “Well, then, finish it!” I waited a minute. “What happened before?” He gazed up at me again. “Before what?” “Before you came back. And before you went away.” For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What happened?”