"To abandon my false gods. Lead me back to peace by the steps _you've_
trod. By so much as they must have remained traceable to you, shall I
find them of interest and profit. They must in fact be most remarkable:
won't they even--for what _I_ may find in them--be more remarkable than
those we should now be taking together if we hadn't separated, if we
hadn't pulled up?" That was a proposition I could present to her with
candour, but before her absence of precipitation had permitted her much
to consider it I had already followed it on. "You'll just tell me,
however, that since I do pull up and turn back with you we shall just
have _not_ separated. Well, then, so much the better--I see you're
right. But I want," I earnestly declared, "not to lose an inch of the
journey."
She watched me now as a Roman lady at the circus may have watched an
exemplary Christian. "The journey has been a very simple one," she said
at last. "With my mind made up on a single point, it was taken at a
stride."
I was all interest. "On a single point?" Then, as, almost excessively
deliberate, she still kept me: "You mean the still commonplace character
of Long's--a--consciousness?"
She had taken at last again the time she required. "Do you know what I
think?"
"It's exactly what I'm pressing you to make intelligible."
"Well," said Mrs. Briss, "I think you're crazy."