"What the woman we so earnestly looked for would have to be."
"All gone?" She had hesitated, but she went on with decision. "No, she
isn't all gone, since there was enough of her left to make up to poor
Briss."
"Precisely--and it's just what we saw, and just what, with her other
dashes of the same sort, led us to have to face the question of her
being--well, what I say. Or rather," I added, "what _you_ say. That is,"
I amended, to keep perfectly straight, "what you say you _don't_ say."
I took indeed too many precautions for my friend not to have to look at
them. "Extravagant?" The irritation of the word had grown for her, yet I
risked repeating it, and with the effect of its giving her another
pause. "I tell you she _isn't_, that!"
"Exactly; and it's only to ask you what in the world then she _is_."
"She's horrid!" said Mrs. Briss.
"'Horrid'?" I gloomily echoed.
"Horrid. It wasn't," she then developed with decision, "a 'dash,' as you
say, 'of the same sort'--though goodness knows of what sort you mean; it
wasn't, to be plain, a 'dash' at all." My companion _was_ plain. "She
settled. She stuck." And finally, as I could but echo her again: "She
made love to him."
"But--a--really?"
"Really. That's how I knew."