Read "Flickerbridge" by Henry James online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Oh yes, she said you were engaged to her. That was why -- since I HAD broken out -- she thought I might like to see you; as I assure you I've been so delighted to. But AREN'T you? " the good lady asked as if she saw in his face some ground for doubt.
"Assuredly -- if she says so. It may seem very odd to you, but I haven't known, and yet I've felt that, being nothing whatever to you directly, I need some warrant for consenting thus to be thrust on you. We WERE," the young man explained, "engaged a year ago; but since then (if you don't mind my telling you such things; I feel now as if I could tell you anything! ) I haven't quite known how I stand. It hasn't seemed we were in a position to marry. Things are better now, but I haven't quite known how she'd see them. They were so bad six months ago that I understood her, I thought, as breaking off. I haven't broken; I've only accepted, for the time -- because men must be easy with women -- being treated as 'the best of friends. ' Well, I try to be. I wouldn't have come here if I hadn't been. I thought it would be charming for her to know you -- when I heard from her the extraordinary way you had dawned upon her; and charming therefore if I could help her to it. And if I'm helping you to know HER," he went on, "isn't that charming too?"