He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said was: “Do you mean now⁠—here?”

“There couldn’t be a better place or time.” He looked round him uneasily, and I had the rare⁠—oh, the queer!⁠—impression of the very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It was as if he were suddenly afraid of me⁠—which struck me indeed as perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost grotesque. “You want so to go out again?”