He was discernibly trying to take for granted
more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy;
and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation.
Our meal was of the briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things
immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his
hands in his little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked
out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen
what pulled me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us--
as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who,
on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence
of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us.
"Well--so we're alone!"
XXIII
"Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely.
We shouldn't like that!" I went on.
"No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others."
"We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred.
"Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his
hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me,
"they don't much count, do they?"
I made the best of it, but I felt wan.
"It depends on what you call `much'!"
"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!"
On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently
reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step.
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