“An attachment.”

“An attachment.”

“That you shouldn’t have?”

“That I shouldn’t have.”

“A passion?”

“A passion.”

“Shared?”

“Ah, thank goodness, no!”

Mrs. Dyott continued to gaze. “The object’s unaware—?”

“Utterly.”

Mrs. Dyott turned it over. “Are you sure?”

“Sure.”

“That’s what you call your decency? But isn’t it,” Mrs. Dyott asked, “rather his?”

“Dear, no. It’s only his good fortune.”

Mrs. Dyott laughed. “But yours, darling—your good fortune: where does that come in?”

“Why, in my sense of the romance of it.”

“The romance of what? Of his not knowing?”

“Of my not wanting him to. If I did”—Maud had touchingly worked it out—“where would be my honesty?”

The inquiry, for an instant, held her friend; yet only, it seemed, for a stupefaction that was almost amusement. “Can you want or not want as you like? Where in the world, if you don’t want, is your romance?”

Mrs. Blessingbourne still wore her smile, and she now, with a light gesture that matched it, just touched the region of her heart. “There!”

Her companion admiringly marveled. “A lovely place for it, no doubt!—but not quite a place, that I can see, to make the sentiment a relation.”

“Why not? What more is required for a relation for me?”

“Oh, all sorts of things, I should say! And many more, added to those, to make it one for the person you mention.”

“Ah, that I don’t pretend it either should be or can be. I only speak for myself.”

It was said in a manner that made Mrs. Dyott, with a visible mixture of impressions, suddenly turn away. She indulged in a vague movement or two, as if to look for something; then again found herself near her friend, on whom with the same abruptness, in fact with a strange sharpness, she conferred a kiss that might have represented either her tribute to exalted consistency or her idea of a graceful close of the discussion. “You deserve that one should speak for you!”