"Well, perhaps I ought to also--since I've heard some of it before!
Yet I can't bear it," the poor woman went on while, with the same movement,
she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch.
"But I must go back."
I kept her, however. "Ah, if you can't bear it--!"
"How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just FOR that:
to get her away. Far from this," she pursued, "far from THEM-"
"She may be different? She may be free?" I seized her almost with joy.
"Then, in spite of yesterday, you BELIEVE--"
"In such doings?" Her simple description of them required,
in the light of her expression, to be carried no further,
and she gave me the whole thing as she had never done.
"I believe."
Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might
continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened.
My support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had
been in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer
for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of
taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed.
"There's one thing, of course--it occurs to me--to remember.
My letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town before you."
I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and
how weary at last it had made her. "Your letter won't have got there.
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