"Oh!" cried Rachel. "Yes. Yes, certainly. Rather. Tea."
It was clear to me that after that I must as people say "have things out" with Rachel. But before I could do anything of the sort the Fürstin pounced upon me. She made me sit up that night after her other guests had gone to their rooms, in the cosy little turret apartment she called her study and devoted to the reading of whatever was most notorious in contemporary British fiction. "Sit down," said she, "by the fire in that chair there and tell me all about it. It's no good your pretending you don't know what I mean. What are you up to with her, and why don't you go straight to your manifest destiny as a decent man should?"
"Because manifestly it isn't my destiny," I said.
"You know perfectly well why I am out of England."
"Everybody knows--except of course quite young persons who are being carefully brought up."
"Well, it does seem rather essential----"
"Tell her yourself, if she must be told. Down there in Surrey, she _must_ have seen things and heard things. But I don't see that she wants a lot of ancient history."
"Oh! two years and a half,--it's an Era."
I made no answer to that, but sat staring into the fire while my cousin watched my face. At length I made my confession. "I don't think it is ancient history at all," I said. "I think if I met Mary again now----"
"It would be good for your mind if you remembered to call her by her proper name.... You think if you met her again you two would begin to carry on. But you see,--you aren't going to meet her. Everybody will see that doesn't happen."
"You'd better not say it. Besides, it's nonsense. I doubt if you've given her a thought for weeks and weeks."
"Until I came here perhaps that was almost nearly true. But you've stirred me up, sweet cousin, and old things, old memories and habits have come to the surface again. Mary wrote herself over my life--in all sorts of places.... I can't tell you. I've never talked of her to anyone. I'm not able, very well, to talk about my feelings.... Perhaps a man of my sort--doesn't love twice over."
I disregarded a note of dissent from my cousin. "That was all so magic, all my youth, all my hope, all the splendid adventure of it. Why should one pretend?... I'm giving none of that to Rachel. It isn't there any more to give...."