''Quite fair, sir.''
''Good. Very good . . .'' Then she must I suppose lower her head, for the kindness sinks from his face. He puts the paintbrush to his tongue and sucks the hairs into a point. ''I''ll do it tonight,'' he says, thoughtfully. ''Shall I? I will. I''ll make my way to her room, as I made my way to yours. All you must do is, give me fifteen minutes alone with her''—again he looks at me—''and not come, if she cries out.''
It has seemed, until this point, a sort of game. Don''t gentlemen and young ladies, in country houses, play games—flirt and intrigue? Now comes the first failing, or shrinking back, of my heart. When Agnes undresses me that night, I cannot look at her. I turn my head. ''You may close the door to your room, this once,'' I say; and I feel her hesitate—perhaps catch the weakness in my voice, grow puzzled. I do not watch her leave me. I hear the clicking of the latch, the murmur of her prayers; I hear the murmur broken off, when he comes to her door. She does not cry out, after all. Should I really be able to keep from going to her, if she did? I do not know. But, she does not, her voice only lifts high, in surprise, in indignation and then—I suppose—a kind of panic; but then it drops, is stifled or soothed, gives way in a moment to whispers, to the rub of linen or limbs . . . Then the rub becomes silence. And the silence is worst of all: not an absence of sound, but teeming—as they say clear water teems, when viewed through a lens—with kicks and squirming