Page:In The Cage (London, Duckworth, 1898).djvu/97

of the smaller gates of the Park; upon which, without any particular word about it—they were talking so of other things—they crossed the street and went in and sat down on a bench. She had gathered by this time one magnificent hope about him—the hope that he would say nothing vulgar. She knew what she meant by that; she meant something quite apart from any matter of his being 'false.' Their bench was not far within; it was near the Park Lane paling and the patchy lamplight and the rumbling cabs and 'buses. A strange emotion had come to her, and she felt indeed excitement within excitement; above all a conscious joy in testing him with chances he didn't take. She had an intense desire he should know the type she really was without her doing anything so low as tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from the moment he didn't seize the opportunities into which a common man would promptly have blundered. These were on the mere surface, and their relation was behind and below them. She had questioned so little on the way what they were doing, that as soon as they were seated she took