He spoke no word for a long minute, or for considerably more than that; during which time the motor went and went, now even somewhat faster, and he knew, through his closed eyes, that the outer lights had begun to multiply and that they were getting back somewhere into the spacious and decorative quarters. He knew this, and also that his retreat, for all his attitude as of accommodating thought, his airthat presently and quickly came to himof having perhaps gathered himself in, for an instant, at her behest, to turn over, in his high ingenuity, some humbugging rotten phrase or formula that he might place at her service and make the note of such an effort; he became aware, I say, that his lapse was but a half-retreat, with her strenuous presence and her earnest pressure and the close cool respiration of her good faith absolutely timing the moments of his stillness and the progress of the car. Yes, it was wondrous well, he had all but made the biggest of all fools of himself, almost as big a one as she was still, to every appearance, in her perfect serenity, trying to make of him; and the one straight answer to it would be that he should reach forward and touch the footmans shoulder and demand that the vehicle itself should make an end.
That would be an answer, however, he continued intensely to see, only to inanely importunate, to utterly superfluous Amy Evansnot a bit to his at last exquisitely patient companion, who was clearly now quite taking it from him that what kept him in his attitude was the spring of the quick desire to oblige her, the charming loyal impulse to consider a little what he could do for her, say handsomely yet conscientiously (oh the loveliness!) before he should commit himself. She was enchantedthat seemed to breathe upon him; she waited, she hung there, she quite bent over him, as Diana over the sleeping Endymion, while all the conscientious man of letters in him, as she might so supremely have phrased it, struggled with the more peccable, the more muddled and squared, though, for her own ideal, the so much more banal comrade. Yes, he could keep it up nowthat is he could hold out for his real reply, could meet the rather marked tension of the rest of their passage as well as she; he should be able somehow or other to make his wordless detachment, the tribute of his ostensibly deep consideration of her request, a retreat in good order. She was, for herself, to the last point of her guileless fatuity, Amy Evans and an asker for lifts, a conceiver of twaddle both in herself and in him; or at least, so far as she fell short of all this platitude, it was no fault of the really affecting folly of her attempt to become a mere magazine mortal after the only fashion she had made out, to the intensification of her self-complacency, that she might.
Nothing might thus have touched him moreif to be touched, beyond a certain point, hadnt been to be squaredthan the way she failed to divine the bearing of his thoughts; so that she had probably at no one small crisis of her life felt so much a promise in the flutter of her own as on the occasion of the beautiful act she indulged in at the very moment, he was afterward to recognise, of their sweeping into her great smooth, empty, costly streeta desert, at that hour, of lavish lamplight and sculptured stone. She raised to her lips the hand she had never yet released and kept it there a moment pressed close against them; he himself closing his eyes to the deepest detachment he was capable of while he took in with a smothered sound of pain that this was the conferred bounty by which Amy Evans sought most expressively to encourage, to sustain and to reward. The motor had slackened and in a moment would stop; and meanwhile even after lowering his hand again she hadnt let it go. This enabled it, while he after a further moment roused himself to a more confessed consciousness, to form with his friends a more active relation, to possess him of hers, in turn, and with an intention the straighter that her glove had by this time somehow come off. Bending over it without hinderance, he returned as firmly and fully as the application of all his recovered wholeness of feeling, under his moustache, might express, the consecration the bareness of his own knuckles had received; only after which it was that, still thus drawing out his grasp of her, and having let down their front glass by his free hand, he signified to the footman his view of their stopping short.
They had arrived; the high, closed porte-cochere, in its crested stretch of wall, awaited their approach; but his gesture took effect, the car pulled up at the edge of the pavement, the man, in an instant, was at the door and had opened it; quickly moving across the walk, the next moment, to press the bell at the gate. Berridge, as his hand now broke away, felt he had cut his cable; with which, after he had stepped out, he raised again the glass he had lowered and closed, its own being already down, the door that had released him. During these motions he had the sense of his companion, still radiant and splendid, but somehow momentarily suppressed, suspended, silvered over and celestially blurred, even as a summer moon by the loose veil of a cloud. So it was he saw her while he leaned for farewell on the open window-ledge; he took her in as her visible intensity of bright vagueness filled the circle that the interior of the car made for her. It was such a state as she would have been reduced tohe felt this, was certain of itfor the first time in her life; and it was he, poor John Berridge, after all, who would have created the condition.
Good-night, Princess. I shant see you again.
Vague was indeed no word for itshine though she might, in her screened narrow niche, as with the liquefaction of her pearls, the glimmer of her tears, the freshness of her surprise. You wont come inwhen youve had no supper?
He smiled at her with a purpose of kindness that could never in his life have been greater; and at first but smiled without a word. He presently shook his head, howeverdoubtless also with as great a sadness. I seem to have supped to my fill, Princess. Thank you, I wont come in.
It drew from her, while she looked at him, a long low anxious wail. And you wont do my Preface?
No, Princess, I wont do your Preface. Nothing would induce me to say a word in print about you. Im in fact not sure I shall ever mention you in any manner at all as long as ever I live.
He had felt for an instant as if he were speaking to some miraculously humanised idol, all sacred, all jewelled, all votively hung about, but made mysterious, in the recess of its shrine, by the very thickness of the accumulated lustre. And Then you dont like me? was the marvellous sound from the image.
Princess, was in response the sound of the worshipper, Princess, I adore you. But Im ashamed for you.
Ashamed?
You are Romanceas everything, and by what I make out every one, about you is; so what more do you want? Your Prefacethe only one worth speaking ofwas written long ages ago by the most beautiful imagination of man.
Humanised at least for these moments, she could understand enough to declare that she didnt. I dont, I dont!
You dont need to understand. Dont attempt such base things. Leave those to us. Only live. Only be. Well do the rest.
She moved overshe had come close to the window. Ah, but Mr. Berridge!
He raised both hands; he shook them at her gently, in deep and soft deprecation. Dont sound my dreadful name. Fortunately, however, you cant help yourself.