"Voyons, then.Light or darkness, my imagination rides me.But of course if it's all wrong I want to get rid of it.You can't, naturally, help me to destroy the faculty itself, but you can aid in the defeat of its application to a particular case.It was because you so smiled, before, on that application, that I valued even my minor difference with you; and what I refer to as my loss is the fact that your frown leaves me struggling alone.The best thing for me, accordingly, as I feel, is to get rid altogether of the obsession.
The way to do that, clearly, since YOU'VE done it, is just to quench the fire.By the fire I mean the flame of the fancy that blazed so for us this morning.What the deuce have you, for yourself, poured on it? Tell me,"I pleaded, "and teach me."
Equally with her voice her face echoed me again."Teach you?""To abandon my false gods.Lead me back to peace by the steps YOU'VEtrod.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."It naturally struck me."Crazy?"
"Crazy."
I turned it over."But do you call that intelligible?"She did it justice."No: I don't suppose it CAN be so for you if you ARE insane."I risked the long laugh which might have seemed that of madness."'If I am' is lovely!" And whether or not it was the special sound, in my ear, of my hilarity, I remember just wondering if perhaps I mightn't be."Dear woman, it's the point at issue!"But it was as if she too had been affected."It's not at issue for me now."I gave her then the benefit of my stirred speculation."It always happens, of course, that one is one's self the last to know.You're perfectly convinced?"She not ungracefully, for an instant, faltered; but since I really would have it--! "Oh, so far as what we've talked of is concerned, perfectly!""And it's actually what you've come down then to tell me?""Just exactly what.And if it's a surprise to you," she added, "that I SHOULD have come down--why, I can only say I was prepared for anything.""Anything?" I smiled.
"In the way of a surprise."
I thought; but her preparation was natural, though in a moment I could match it."Do you know that's what I was too?""Prepared--?"
"For anything in the way of a surprise.But only FROM you," I explained.
"And of course--yes," I mused, "I've got it.If I AM crazy," I went on--"it's indeed simple."She appeared, however, to feel, from the influence of my present tone, the impulse, in courtesy, to attenuate."Oh, I don't pretend it's simple!""No? I thought that was just what you did pretend.""I didn't suppose," said Mrs.Briss, "that you'd like it.I didn't suppose that you'd accept it or even listen to it.But I owed it to you--" She hesitated.
"You owed it to me to let me know what you thought of me even should it prove very disagreeable?"That perhaps was more than she could adopt."I owed it to myself," she replied with a touch of austerity.
"To let me know I'm demented?"
"To let you know I'm NOT." We each looked, I think, when she had said it, as if she had done what she said."That's all.""All?" I wailed."Ah, don't speak as if it were so little.It's much.
It's everything."
"It's anything you will!" said Mrs.Briss impatiently."Good-night.""Good-night?" I was aghast."You leave me on it?"She appeared to profess for an instant all the freshness of her own that she was pledged to guard."I must leave you on something.I couldn't come to spend a whole hour.""But do you think it's so quickly done to persuade a man he's crazy?""I haven't expected to persuade you."
"Only to throw out the hint?"
"Well," she admitted, "it would be good if it could work in you.But I've told you," she added as if to wind up and have done, "what determined me.""I beg your pardon"--oh, I protested! "That's just what you've not told me.The reason of your change--""I'm not speaking," she broke in, "of my change.""Ah, but i am!" I declared with a sharpness that threw her back for a minute on her reserves."It's your change," I again insisted, "that's the interesting thing.If I'm crazy, I must once more remind you, you were simply crazy WITH me; and how can I therefore be indifferent to your recovery of your wit or let you go without having won from you the secret of your remedy?" I shook my head with kindness, but with decision."You mustn't leave me till you've placed it in my hand."The reserves I had spoken of were not, however, to fail her."I thought you just said that you let my inconsistency go.""Your moral responsibility for it--perfectly.But how can I show a greater indulgence than by positively desiring to enter into its history? It's in that sense that, as I say," I developed, "I do speak of your change.
