told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.
That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're
happy, and you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're
completely changed. You conceal everything; I haven't really come
near you."

"You come very near," Isabel said gently, but in a tone of
warning.

"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you
done well?"

"You ask a great deal."

"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell
me. I shall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of
my business." He had spoken with a visible effort to control
himself, to give a considerate form to an inconsiderate state of
mind. But the sense that it was his last chance, that he loved
her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool whatever he
should say, suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration
to his low voice. "You're perfectly inscrutable, and that's what
makes me think you've something to hide. I tell you I don't care
a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I don't like him.
I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away with him.
I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If you
should ask me I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to
leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were
as contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather
know the truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come