Now she's all over the place." But he came back to something else."I like your talking, my dear man, of what you 'don't perceive.' I've yet to find out what that remarkable quantity is.What you do perceive has at all events given me so much to think about that it doubtless ought to serve me for the present.I feel I ought to let you know that you've made me also perceive the Brissendens." I of course remembered what I had said to him, but it was just this that now touched my uneasiness, and I only echoed the name, a little blankly, with the instinct of gaining time."You put me on them wonderfully," Obert continued, "though of course I've kept your idea to myself.All the same it sheds a great light."I could again but feebly repeat it."A great light?""As to what may go on even between others still.It's a jolly idea--a torch in the darkness; and do you know what I've done with it? I've held it up, I don't mind telling you, to just the question of the change, since this interests you, in Mrs.Server.If you've got your mystery I'll be hanged if I won't have mine.If you've got your Brissendens I shall see what I can do with HER.You've given me an analogy, and I declare I find it dazzling.I don't see the end of what may be done with it.If Brissenden's paying for his wife, for her amazing second bloom, who's paying for Mrs.
Server? Isn't THAT--what do the newspapers call it?--the missing word?
Isn't it perhaps in fact just what you told me last night you were on the track of? But don't add now," he went on, more and more amused with his divination, "don't add now that the man's obviously Gilbert Long--for Iwon't be put off with anything of the sort.She collared him much too markedly.
The real man must be one she doesn't markedly collar.""But I thought that what you a moment ago made out was that she so markedly collars all of us." This was my immediate reply to Obert's blaze of ingenuity, but I none the less saw more things in it than I could reply to.I saw, at any rate, and saw with relief, that if he should look on the principle suggested to him by the case of the Brissendens, there would be no danger at all of his finding it.If, accordingly, I was nervous for Mrs.Server, all I had to do was to keep him on this false scent.Since it was not she who was paid for, but she who possibly paid, his fancy might harmlessly divert him till the party should disperse.At the same time, in the midst of these reflections, the question of the "change" in her, which he was in so much better a position than I to measure, couldn't help having for me its portent, and the sense of that was, no doubt, in my next words.
"What makes you think that what you speak of was what I had in my head?""Well, the way, simply, that the shoe fits.She's absolutely not the same person I painted.It's exactly like Mrs.Brissenden's having been for you yesterday not the same person you had last seen bearing her name.""Very good," I returned, "though I didn't in the least mean to set you digging so hard.However, dig on your side, by all means, while I dig on mine.All I ask of you is complete discretion.""Ah, naturally!"