May Bartram had a pause. "Do you ask that, by any chance, because you
feel at all that yours isn't? I mean because you have to wait so long."

Oh he understood what she meant! "For the thing to happen that never
does happen? For the Beast to jump out? No, I'm just where I was about
it. It isn't a matter as to which I can _choose_, I can decide for a
change. It isn't one as to which there _can_ be a change. It's in the
lap of the gods. One's in the hands of one's law--there one is. As to
the form the law will take, the way it will operate, that's its own
affair."

"Yes," Miss Bartram replied; "of course one's fate's coming, of course it
_has_ come in its own form and its own way, all the while. Only, you
know, the form and the way in your case were to have been--well,
something so exceptional and, as one may say, so particularly _your_
own."

Something in this made him look at her with suspicion. "You say 'were to
_have_ been,' as if in your heart you had begun to doubt."

"Oh!" she vaguely protested.

"As if you believed," he went on, "that nothing will now take place."

She shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably. "You're far from my
thought."

He continued to look at her. "What then is the matter with you?"