I had felt I could risk such directness only by making it
extravagant--by suggesting it as barely imaginable that she could so
have played our game; and during the instant for which I had now pulled
her up I could judge I had been right. It was an instant that settled
everything, for I saw her, with intensity, with gallantry too, surprised
but not really embarrassed, recognise that of course she must simply
lie. I had been justified by making it so possible for her to lie. "It
would have been a short cut," I said, "and even more strikingly
perhaps--to do it justice--a bold deed. But it would have been, in
strictness, a departure--wouldn't it?--from our so distinguished little
compact. Yet while I look at you," I went on, "I wonder. Bold deeds are,
after all, quite in your line; and I'm not sure I don't rather want not
to have missed so much possible comedy. 'I have it for you from Mr. Long
himself that, every appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, his
stupidity is unimpaired'--isn't that, for the beauty of it, after all,
what you've veraciously to give me?" We stood face to face a moment, and
I laughed out. "The beauty of it would be great!"
I had given her time; I had seen her safely to shore. It was quite what
I had meant to do, but she now took still better advantage than I had
expected of her opportunity. She not only scrambled up the bank, she
recovered breath and turned round. "Do you imagine he would have told
me?"
It was magnificent, but I felt she was still to better it should I give
her a new chance. "Who the lady really is? Well, hardly; and that's why,
as you so acutely see, the question of your having risked such a step
has occurred to me only as a jest. Fancy indeed"--I piled it up--"your
saying to him: 'We're all noticing that you're so much less of an idiot
than you used to be, and we've different views of the miracle'!"
I had been going on, but I was checked without a word from her. Her look
alone did it, for, though it was a look that partly spoiled her lie,
it--by that very fact--sufficed to my confidence. "I've not spoken to a
creature."
It was beautifully said, but I felt again the abysses that the mere
saying of it covered, and the sense of these wonderful things was not a
little, no doubt, in my immediate cheer. "Ah, then, we're all right!" I
could have rubbed my hands over it. "I mean, however," I quickly added,
"only as far as that. I don't at all feel comfortable about your new
theory itself, which puts me so wretchedly in the wrong."
"Rather!" said Mrs. Briss almost gaily. "Wretchedly indeed in the
wrong!"
"Yet only--equally of course," I returned after a brief brooding, "if I
come within a conceivability of accepting it. Are you conscious that, in
default of Long's own word--equivocal as that word would be--you press
it upon me without the least other guarantee?"
"And pray," she asked, "what guarantee had _you_?"
"For the theory with which we started? Why, our recognised fact. The
change in the man. You may say," I pursued, "that I was the first to
speak for him; but being the first didn't, in your view, constitute a
weakness when it came to your speaking yourself for Mrs. Server. By
which I mean," I added, "speaking against her."
She remembered, but not for my benefit. "Well, you then asked me _my_
warrant. And as regards Mr. Long and your speaking against _him_----"
"Do you describe what I say as 'against' him?" I immediately broke in.