"Then there we are again at our mystery! I don't think, you know," I
made out for her, "it was my person, really, that gave its charm to my
theory; I think it was much more my theory that gave its charm to my
person. My person, I flatter myself, has remained through these few
hours--hours of tension, but of a tension, you see, purely
intellectual--as good as ever; so that if we're not, even in our
anomalous situation, in danger from any such source, it's simply that my
theory is dead and that the blight of the rest is involved."
My words were indeed many, but she plumped straight through them. "As
soon as I was away from you I hated you."
"Hated _me_?"
"Well, hated what you call 'the rest'--hated your theory."
"I see. Yet," I reflected, "you're not at present--though you wish to
goodness, no doubt, you _were_--away from me."
"Oh, I don't care now," she said with courage; "since--for you see I
believe you--we're away from your delusions."
"You wouldn't, in spite of your belief,"--I smiled at her--"like to be a
little further off yet?" But before she could answer, and because also,
doubtless, the question had too much the sound of a taunt, I came up, as
if for her real convenience, quite in another place. "Perhaps my
idea--my timing, that is, of your crisis--is the result, in my mind, of
my own association with that particular instant. It comes back to me
that what I was most full of while your face signed to me and your voice
then so graciously confirmed it, and while too, as I've said, Long
walked away--what I was most full of, as a consequence of another go,
just ended, at Lady John, was, once more, this same Lady John's want of
adjustability to the character you and I, in our associated speculation
of the morning, had so candidly tried to fit her with. I was still even
then, you see, speculating--all on my own hook, alas!--and it had just
rolled over me with renewed force that she was nothing whatever, not the
least little bit, to our purpose. The moment, in other words, if you
understand, happened to be one of _my_ moments; so that, by the same
token, I simply wondered if it mightn't likewise have happened to be one
of yours."
"It _was_ one of mine," Mrs. Briss replied as promptly as I could
reasonably have expected; "in the sense that--as you've only to
consider--it was to lead more or less directly to these present words of
ours."
If I had only to consider, nothing was more easy; but each time I
considered, I was ready to show, the less there seemed left by the act.
"Ah, but you had then _already_ backed out. _Won't_ you understand--for
you're a little discouraging--that I want to catch you at the earlier
stage?"
"To 'catch' me?" I had indeed expressions!
"Absolutely catch! Focus you under the first shock of the observation
that was to make everything fall to pieces for you."
"But I've told you," she stoutly resisted, "that there was no 'first'
shock."
"Well, then, the second or the third."
"There was no shock," Mrs. Briss magnificently said, "at all."
It made me somehow break into laughter. "You found it so natural
then--and you so rather liked it--to make up your mind of a sudden that
you had been steeped in the last intellectual intimacy with a maniac?"
She thought once more, and then, as I myself had just previously done,
came up in another place. "I had at the moment you speak of wholly given
up any idea of Lady John."
But it was so feeble it made me smile. "Of course you had, you poor
innocent! You couldn't otherwise, hours before, have strapped the saddle
so tight on another woman."
"I had given up everything," she stubbornly continued.
"It's exactly what, in reference to that juncture, I perfectly embrace."
"Well, even in reference to that juncture," she resumed, "you may catch
me as much as you like." With which, suddenly, during some seconds, I
saw her hold herself for a leap. "You talk of 'focussing,' but what
else, even in those minutes, were you in fact engaged in?"
"Ah, then, you do recognise them," I cried--"those minutes?"
She took her jump, though with something of a flop. "Yes--as, consenting
thus to be catechised, I cudgel my brain for your amusement--I do
recognise them. I remember what I thought. You focussed--I felt you
focus. I saw you wonder whereabouts, in what you call our associated
speculation, I would by that time be. I asked myself whether you'd
understand if I should try to convey to you simply by my expression such
a look as would tell you all. By 'all' I meant the fact that, sorry as I
was for you--or perhaps for myself--it had struck me as only fair to let
you know as straight as possible that I was nowhere. That was why I
stared so, and I of course couldn't explain to you," she lucidly
pursued, "to whom my stare had reference."