He seemed to look at me quite without uneasiness now. "Why, haven't you
seen for yourself----?"
"How the case stands with her on that head? Do you mean haven't I talked
with her? Well, scarcely; for it's a fact that every man in the house
_but_ I strikes me as having been deluged with that privilege: if
indeed," I laughed, "her absence of topics suffers it to be either a
privilege or a deluge! She affects me, in any case, as determined to
have nothing to do with me. She walks all the rest of you about; she
gives you each your turn; me only she skips, she systematically ignores.
I'm half consoled for it, however," I wound up, "by seeing what short
innings any individual of you has. You personally strike me as having
had the longest."
Brissenden appeared to wonder where I was coming out, yet not as if he
feared it. There was even a particular place, if I could but guess it,
where he would have liked me to come. "Oh, she's extremely charming. But
of course she's strikingly odd."
"Odd?--really?"
"Why, in the sense, I mean, that I thought you suggested you've
noticed."
"That of extravagant vivacity? Oh, I've had to notice it at a distance,
without knowing what it represents."