"Well then, frighten her straight away again, if you like that better!" With which she simply left him, passing out at once by the door opposite the one she had quitted and closing it sharply behind her.
Ralph turned to Perry in his flush of wonder. "Frighten her away? _Do_ I frighten----?"
Perry kept his great distance, but spoke after an instant in the sense of accommodation. "You don't frighten _me_--now. You can't, I wouldn't have it even if you wanted to--which I now guess you don't."
"But why in the name of my dearest interest _should_ I?" It was strange again to Ralph, his facing his young kinsman's so exposed, yet so inscrutable sensibility; yet this aspect of him somehow suggested withal that he mightn't at all prove the person from whom there was most to fear. Why, however, at the same time, did this question of fear, suddenly let loose by Molly in her retreat--for wasn't it a retreat?--seem to flutter about the room, itself a scared bird, and make as if for perching on Ralph's own shoulder? It might verily have been perching as our young man, staring about, plucked a fresh apprehension from Perry. "You don't mean that Molly and I frightened off your mother and Sir Cantopher?"
Perry, though always at his distance, was placed by this almost at his ease. "Molly must answer you for herself--but she doesn't really know much more what to make of you than I do."
Ralph's wide eyes stared his reply still more than his lips could form it. "You don't know what to make of me----?"
"Only she likes nevertheless what you do to her that way as her lover. She's not too afraid of you yet for _that!_" Perry explained with a new authority.
This was extraordinary to Ralph--his having gathered such things to tell from that lapse of their consciousness, Molly's and his own, of anything but their possession of each other. "Oh well, I'm glad I have still that advantage!"--and Ralph kept his laugh at least brave. "But was it because _they_ didn't know what to make of us----?" Perry had really arrived at an approach to clear suggestion. "We're lovers so accepted and blessed----!" He would puzzle it out, but appealed to his Companion for help.
"No, it isn't that they were shocked at your freedom"--Perry said--"though you _were_ free!"