"Antigone will hang herself?"
"No. She won't hang herself. She'll chuck me. That's how she has me,
it's how I'm fixed. Can you conceive a beastlier position?"
I said I couldn't, and that if a girl of mine put me in it, by
heaven, I'd chuck _her_.
He smiled. "You can't chuck Antigone," he said.
I said Antigone's attitude was what I didn't understand. It was
inconceivable she didn't know what the things were like. "What do
you suppose she really thinks of them?"
That was it. She had never committed herself to an opinion. "You
know," he said, "she never did."
"But," I argued, "you told me yourself she said they'd represent
him. And they do, don't they?"
"Represent him?" He grinned in his agony. "I should think they did."
"But," I persisted, because he seemed to me to be shirking the
issue, "it was her idea, wasn't it? that they'd justify him, give
him his chance to speak, to put himself straight with _us_?"
"She seems," he said meditatively, "to have taken that for granted."
"Taken it for granted? Skittles!" I said. "She must have seen they
were impossible. I'm convinced, Burton, that she's seen it all
along; she's merely testing you to see how you'd behave, how far
you'd go for her. You needn't worry. You've gone far enough. She'll
let you off."
"No," he said, "she's not testing me. I'd have seen through her if
it had been that. It's deadly serious. It's a sacred madness with
her. She'll never let me off. She'll never let herself off. I've
told you a hundred times it's expiation. We can't get round _that_."
"She must be mad, indeed," I said, "not to see."
"See? See?" he cried. "It's my belief, Simpson, that she hasn't
seen. She's been hiding her dear little head in the sand."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean," he said, "she hasn't looked. She's been afraid to."
"Hasn't looked?"
"Hasn't read the damned things. She doesn't know how they expose
him."
"Then, my dear fellow," I said, "you've got to tell her."
"Tell her?" he cried. "If I told her she _would_ go and hang
herself. No. I'm not to tell her. I'm not to tell anybody. She's got
an idea that he's pretty well exposed himself, and, don't you see,
I'm to wrap him up."
"Wrap him up----"
"Wrap him up, so that she can't see, so that nobody can see.
_That's_ what I'm here for--to edit him, Simpson, edit him out of
all recognition. She hasn't put it to herself that way, but that's
what she means. I'm to do my best for him. She's left it to me with
boundless trust in my--my constructive imagination. Do you see?"