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Worthingham had practically, even if accidentally, helped him to knowledge; the last nail in the coffin of the poor dear extinct past had been planted for him by his having thus to reach his antique contemporary through perforation of the newest newness.
Then with that he had been entertaining, to the point and with the prolonged consequence of accepted immobilization, the certitude that if he did call on Mrs. Worthingham and find her at home he couldn't in justice to himself not put to her the question that had lapsed the other time, the last time, through the irritating and persistent, even if accidental, presence of others.
He had said to himself then, or had as good as said it, that, since he might do perfectly as he liked, it couldn't fail for him that he must soon retrace those steps, humming, to all intents, the first bars of a wedding-march; so beautifully had it cleared up that he was "going to like" letting Mrs. Worthingham accept him.
He showed their small relic again with assurance. "You wanted us. Then here we are. Oh how we can talk! with all those things you know! You are an invention. And you'll see there are things J know. I shall turn up here well, daily." She took it in, but only after a moment answered. "There was something you said just now you'd tell me. Don't you mean to try ?" "Mrs. Worthingham?"
It had presently loomed so large that he saw nothing else not only among the things at a considerable distance, the things Mrs. Worthingham would eventually, yet unmistakably, introduce him to, but among those of this lady's various attributes and appurtenances as to which he had been in the very act of cultivating his consciousness.
Extraordinarily, after he had been in the room five minutes a space of time during which his fellow-visitor had neither budged nor uttered a sound he had made Mrs. Worthingham out as all at once perfectly pleased to see him, completely aware of what he had most in mind, and singularly serene in face of his sense of their impediment.
"Not at least," she convulsively smiled, "until you've honourably tried Mrs. Worthingham. Don't you really mean to?" she gallantly insisted. He waited again a little; then he brought out: "I'll tell you presently." He came back, and as by still another mere glance over the room, to what seemed to him so much nearer. "That table was old Twelfth-Street?" "Everything here was."
Worthingham never yet, in other words, denied himself anything he had so distinctly wanted to do; and the results of that wisdom had remained for him precisely the precious parts of experience.
This had really been his luck, for he shouldn't have liked to write to Mrs. Worthingham for guidance that he felt, though too impatient just now to analyze the reluctance.
Worthingham he didn't begin it! they had taken their place bravely in the centre of the circle.
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