I looked at her so hard with it that her colour began to rise, which
made me promptly feel that she wouldn't press that point. "I mean you're
carried away--you're abused by a fine fancy: so that, with your art of
putting things, one doesn't know where one is--nor, if you'll allow me
to say so, do I quite think _you_ always do. Of course I don't deny
you're awfully clever. But you build up," she brought out with a regret
so indulgent and a reluctance so marked that she for some seconds fairly
held the blow--"you build up houses of cards."
I had been impatient to learn what, and, frankly, I was disappointed.
This broke from me, after an instant, doubtless, with a bitterness not
to be mistaken. "Long _isn't_ what he seems?"
"Seems to whom?" she asked sturdily.
"Well, call it--for simplicity--to _me_. For you see"--and I spoke as to
show _what_ it was to see--"it all stands or falls by that."
The explanation presently appeared a little to have softened her. If it
all stood or fell only by _that_, it stood or fell by something that,
for her comfort, might be not so unsuccessfully disposed of. She
exhaled, with the swell of her fine person, a comparative
blandness--seemed to play with the idea of a smile. She had, in short,
her own explanation. "The trouble with you is that you over-estimate the
penetration of others. How can it approach your own?"
"Well, yours had for a while, I should say, distinct moments of keeping
up with it. Nothing is more possible," I went on, "than that I do talk
too much; but I've done so--about the question in dispute between
us--only to _you_. I haven't, as I conceived we were absolutely not to
do, mentioned it to anyone else, nor given anyone a glimpse of our
difference. If you've not understood yourself as pledged to the same
reserve, and have consequently," I went on, "appealed to the light of
other wisdom, it shows at least that, in spite of my intellectual pace,
you must more or less have followed me. What am I _not_, in fine, to
think of your intelligence," I asked, "if, deciding for a resort to
headquarters, you've put the question to Long himself?"
"The question?" She was straight out to sea again.
"Of the identity of the lady."