I could but helplessly think of her. "I'm afraid indeed that, with what
you've done with her, _I_ can't take care of her. But why is she now to
the purpose," I articulately wondered, "any more than she was?"
"Why? On the very system you yourself laid down. When we took him for
brilliant, she couldn't be. But now that we see him as he is----"
"We can only see her also as _she_ is?" Well, I tried, as far as my
amusement would permit, so to see her; but still there were
difficulties. "Possibly!" I at most conceded. "Do you owe your
discovery, however, wholly to my system? My system, where so much made
for protection," I explained, "wasn't intended to have the effect of
exposure."
"It appears to have been at all events intended," my companion returned,
"to have the effect of driving me to the wall; and the consequence of
_that_ effect is nobody's fault but your own."
She was all logic now, and I could easily see, between my light and my
darkness, how she would remain so. Yet I was scarce satisfied. "And it's
only on 'that effect'----?"
"That I've made up my mind?" She was positively free at last to enjoy my
discomfort. "Wouldn't it be surely, if your ideas were worth anything,
enough? But it isn't," she added, "only on that. It's on something
else."
I had after an instant extracted from this the single meaning it could
appear to yield. "I'm to understand that you _know_?"
"That they're intimate enough for anything?" She faltered, but she
brought it out. "I know."
It was the oddest thing in the world for a little, the way this
affected me without my at all believing it. It was preposterous, hang
though it would with her somersault, and she had quite succeeded in
giving it the note of sincerity. It was the mere sound of it that, as I
felt even at the time, made it a little of a blow--a blow of the smart
of which I was conscious just long enough inwardly to murmur: "What if
she _should_ be right?" She had for these seconds the advantage of
stirring within me the memory of her having indeed, the day previous, at
Paddington, "known" as I hadn't. It had been really on what she _then_
knew that we originally started, and an element of our start had been
that I admired her freedom. The form of it, at least--so beautifully had
she recovered herself--was all there now. Well, I at any rate reflected,
it wasn't the form that need trouble me, and I quickly enough put her a
question that related only to the matter. "Of course if she is--it _is_
smash!"
"And haven't you yet got used to its being?"
I kept my eyes on her; I traced the buried figure in the ruins. "She's
good enough for a fool; and so"--I made it out--"is he! If he _is_ the
same ass--yes--they _might_ be."
"_And_ he is," said Mrs. Briss, "the same ass!"
I continued to look at her. "He would have no need then of her having
transformed and inspired him."
"Or of her having _de_formed and idiotised herself," my friend
subjoined.