That was all,
wasn't it?"
Still looking intently at her, he dismissed her query
with a little shake of the head. "'On a business basis,'"
he repeated, as if talking to himself. "They like to have
things 'on a business basis.'"
He halted, with a hand held out over her arm, and she
paused as well, in a reluctant, tentative way. "I don't
understand you," she remarked, blankly.
"Let me put it in this way," he began, knitting his brows,
and marshalling the thoughts and phrases with which
his mind had been busy. "This is the question.
You were saying that you weren't asked to join my Board.
You explained in that way how I could do things for Plowden,
and couldn't do them for you. Oh, I know it was a joke--but
it had its meaning--at least to me. Now I want to ask
you--if I decide to form another Company, a very small
and particular Company--if I should decide to form it,
I say--could I come to you and ask you to join THAT Board?
Of course I could ask--but what I mean is--well, I guess
you know what I mean."
The metaphor had seemed to him a most ingenious and
satisfactory vehicle for his purpose, and it had broken
down under him amid evidences of confusion which he could
not account for. All at once his sense of physical
ascendancy had melted away--disappeared. He looked at Lady
Cressage for an instant, and knew there was something
shuffling and nerveless in the way his glance then shifted
to the dim mountain chain beyond.
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