‘Does it?’ she said, laughing.

‘Always. The Gerald will give you a sum, if you ask him for it — ’

She flushed deeply.

‘I will ask anybody else,’ she said, with some difficulty — ’but not him.’

Loerke looked closely at her.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then let it be somebody else. Only don’t go back to that England, that school. No, that is stupid.’

Again there was a pause. He was afraid to ask her outright to go with him, he was not even quite sure he wanted her; and she was afraid to be asked. He begrudged his own isolation, was VERY chary of sharing his life, even for a day.