“Why, whenever you’ll come to see me.” For the twentieth time she gathered herself as if the words she had just spoken were quite her last hand. “At present, you see, I _have_ a train to catch.” Absorbed in the trivial act that engaged him, he gave her no help. “A train?” “Surely. I didn’t walk.” “No; but even trains----!” His eyes clung to her now. “You fly?” “I try to. Good-bye.” He had got between her and the door of departure quite as, on her attempt to quit him half an hour before, he had anticipated her approach to the stairs; and in this position he took no notice of her farewell. “I said just now that I had nothing to offer you. But of course I’ve the house itself.” “The house?” She stared. “Why, I’ve _got_ it?” “Got it?” “All in my head, I mean. That’s all I want.” She had not yet, save to Mr. Prodmore, made quite so light of it. This had its action in his markedly longer face. “Why, I thought you loved it so!” Ah, she was perfectly consistent. “I love it far too much to deprive _you_ of it.” Yet Clement Yule could in a fashion meet her. “Oh, it wouldn’t be depriving----!” She altogether protested. “Not to turn you out----?” “Dear lady, I’ve never been _in_!” Oh, she was none the less downright. “You’re in _now_--I’ve put you, and you must stay.” He looked round so woefully, however, that she presently attenuated. “I don’t mean _all_ the while, but long enough----!” “Long enough for what?” “For me to feel you’re here.” “And how long will that take?” “Well, you think me very fast--but sometimes I’m slow. I told you just now, at any rate,” she went on, “that I had arranged you should lose nothing. Is the very next thing I do, then, to make you lose everything?” “It isn’t a question of what I lose,” the young man anxiously cried; “it’s a question of what I _do_! What _have_ I done to find it all so plain?” Fate was really--fate reversed, improved, and unnatural--too much for him, and his heated young face showed honest stupefaction. “I haven’t lifted a finger. It’s you who have done all.” “Yes, but if you’re just where you were before, how in the world are you saved?” She put it to him with still superior lucidity. “By my life’s being my own again--to do what I want.” “What you ‘want’”--Mrs. Gracedew’s handsome uplifted head had it all there, every inch of it--“is to keep your house.” “Ah, but only,” he perfectly assented, “if, as you said, you find a way!” “I _have_ found a way--and there the way is: for _me_ just simply not to touch the place. What you ‘want,’” she argued more closely, “is what made you give in to Prodmore. What you ‘want’ is these walls and these acres. What you ‘want’ is to take the way I first showed you.” Her companion’s eyes, quitting for the purpose her face, looked to the quarter marked by her last words as at an horizon now remote. “Why, the way you first showed me was to marry Cora!” She had to admit it, but as little as possible. “Practically--yes.”