"Of course I'm of an astuteness! I _see_ effects. And I saw that one.
How much Briss himself had seen it is, as I've told you, another matter;
and what he had, at any rate, quite taken the affair for was the sort of
flirtation in which, if one is a friend to either party, and one's own
feelings are not at stake, one may now and then give people a lift.
Haven't I asked you before," she demanded, "if you suppose he would have
given one had he had an idea where these people _are_?"
"I scarce know what you have asked me before!" I sighed; "and 'where
they are' is just what you haven't told me."
"It's where my husband was so annoyed unmistakably to discover them."
And as if she had quite fixed the point she passed to another. "He's
peculiar, dear old Briss, but in a way by which, if one uses him--by
which, I mean, if one depends on him--at all, one gains, I think, more
than one loses. Up to a certain point, in any case that's the least a
case for subtlety, he sees nothing at all; but beyond it--when once he
does wake up--he'll go through a house. Nothing then escapes him, and
what he drags to light is sometimes appalling."
"Rather," I thoughtfully responded--"since witness this occasion!"
"But isn't the interest of this occasion, as I've already suggested,"
she propounded, "simply that it makes an end, bursts a bubble, rids us
of an incubus and permits us to go to bed in peace? I thank God," she
moralised, "for dear old Briss to-night."
"So do I," I after a moment returned; "but I shall do so with still
greater fervour if you'll have for the space of another question a still
greater patience." With which, as a final movement from her seemed to
say how much this was to ask, I had on my own side a certain
exasperation of soreness for all I had to acknowledge--even were it mere
acknowledgment--that she had brought rattling down. "Remember," I
pleaded, "that you're costing me a perfect palace of thought!"
I could see too that, held unexpectedly by something in my tone, she
really took it in. Couldn't I even almost see that, for an odd instant,
she regretted the blighted pleasure of the pursuit of truth with me? I
needed, at all events, no better proof either of the sweet or of the
bitter in her comprehension than the accent with which she replied: "Oh,
those who live in glass houses----"
"Shouldn't--no, I know they shouldn't--throw stones; and that's
precisely why I don't." I had taken her immediately up, and I held her
by it and by something better still. "You, from your fortress of
granite, can chuck them about as you will! All the more reason,
however," I quickly added, "that, before my frail, but, as I maintain,
quite sublime structure, you honour me, for a few seconds, with an
intelligent look at it. I seem myself to see it again, perfect in every
part," I pursued, "even while I thus speak to you, and to feel afresh
that, weren't the wretched accident of its weak foundation, it wouldn't
have the shadow of a flaw. I've spoken of it in my conceivable regret,"
I conceded, "as already a mere heap of disfigured fragments; but that
was the extravagance of my vexation, my despair. It's in point of fact
so beautifully fitted that it comes apart piece by piece--which, so far
as that goes, you've seen it do in the last quarter of an hour at your
own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one by one, yourself and
watching me stack them along the ground. They're not even in this
state--see!" I wound up--"a pile of ruins!" I wound up, as I say, but
only for long enough to have, with the vibration, the exaltation, of my
eloquence, my small triumph as against her great one. "I should almost
like, piece by piece, to hand them back to you." And this time I
completed my figure. "I believe that, for the very charm of it, you'd
find yourself placing them by your own sense in their order and rearing
once more the splendid pile. Will you take just _one_ of them from me
again," I insisted, "and let me see if only to have it in your hands
doesn't positively start you off? That's what I meant just now by asking
you for another answer." She had remained silent, as if really in the
presence of the rising magnificence of my metaphor, and it was not too
late for the one chance left me. "There was nothing, you know, I had so
fitted as your account of poor Mrs. Server when, on our seeing them,
from the terrace, together below, you struck off your explanation that
old Briss was _her_ screen for Long."
"Fitted?"--and there was sincerity in her surprise. "I thought my stupid
idea the one for which you had exactly no use!"
"I had no use," I instantly concurred, "for your stupid idea, but I had
great use for your stupidly, alas! having it. _That_ fitted
beautifully," I smiled, "till the piece came out. And even now," I
added, "I don't feel it quite accounted for."
"Their being there together?"
"No. Your not liking it that they were."