"
"To walk round--with you to show me?" Ransom repeated. "My dear Miss
Tarrant, it would be the greatest privilege--the greatest happiness--of
my life. What a delightful idea--what an ideal guide!"
Verena got up; she would go and put on her hat; he must wait a little.
Her offer had a frankness and friendliness which gave him a new
sensation, and he could not know that as soon as she had made it (though
she had hesitated too, with a moment of intense reflexion), she seemed
to herself strangely reckless. An impulse pushed her; she obeyed it with
her eyes open. She felt as a girl feels when she commits her first
conscious indiscretion. She had done many things before which many
people would have called indiscreet, but that quality had not even
faintly belonged to them in her own mind; she had done them in perfect
good faith and with a remarkable absence of palpitation. This
superficially ingenuous proposal to walk around the colleges with Mr.
Ransom had really another colour; it deepened the ambiguity of her
position, by reason of a prevision which I shall presently mention. If
Olive was not to know that she had seen him, this extension of their
interview would double her secret. And yet, while she saw it grow--this
monstrous little mystery--she couldn't feel sorry that she was going out
with Olive's cousin. As I have already said, she had become nervous. She
went to put on her hat, but at the door of the room she stopped, turned
round, and presented herself to her visitor with a small spot in either
cheek, which had appeared there within the instant.
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