"I'm delighted to hear it," I cried, "for it was exactly something strong I wanted of you!""It IS then strong"--and I could see indeed she was ready to satisfy me."You've worried me for my motive and harassed me for my 'moment,' and I've had to protect others and, at the cost of a decent appearance, to pretend to be myself half an idiot.I've had even, for the same purpose--if you must have it--to depart from the truth; to give you, that is, a false account of the manner of my escape from your tangle.But now the truth shall be told, and others can take care of themselves!" She had so wound herself up with this, reached so the point of fairly heaving with courage and candour, that I for an instant almost miscalculated her direction and believed she was really throwing up her cards.It was as if she had decided, on some still finer lines, just to rub my nose into what I had been spelling out; which would have been an anticipation of my own journey's crown of the most disconcerting sort.I wanted my personal confidence, but I wanted nobody's confession, and without the journey's crown where WAS the personal confidence? Without the personal confidence, moreover, where was the personal honour? That would be really the single thing to which I could attach authority, for a confession might, after all, be itself a lie.Anybody, at all events, could fit the shoe to one.My friend's intention, however, remained but briefly equivocal; my danger passed, and I recognised in its place a still richer assurance.It was not the unnamed, in short, who were to be named.
"Lady John IS the woman."
Yet even this was prodigious."But I thought your present position was just that she's NOT!""Lady John IS the woman," Mrs.Briss again announced.
"But I thought your present position was just that nobody is!""Lady John IS the woman," she a third time declared.
It naturally left me gaping."Then there IS one?" I cried between bewilderment and joy.
"A woman? There's HER!" Mrs.Briss replied with more force than grammar.
"I know," she briskly, almost breezily added, "that I said she wouldn't do (as I had originally said she would do better than any one), when you a while ago mentioned her.But that was to save her.""And you don't care now," I smiled, "if she's lost!"She hesitated."She IS lost.But she can take care of herself."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 DEformed and idiotised herself," my friend subjoined.
Oh, how it sharpened my look! "No, no--she wouldn't need that.""The great point is that HE wouldn't!" Mrs.Briss laughed.
I kept it up."She would do perfectly."
Mrs.Briss was not behind."My dear man, she has got to do!"This was brisker still, but I held my way."Almost anyone would do."It seemed for a little, between humour and sadness, to strike her."Almost anyone WOULD.Still," she less pensively declared, "we want the right one.""Surely; the right one"--I could only echo it."But how," I then proceeded, "has it happily been confirmed to you?"It pulled her up a trifle."'Confirmed'--?""That he's her lover."
