"It's exactly what, in reference to that juncture, I perfectly embrace.""Well, even in reference to that juncture," she resumed, "you may catch me as much as you like." With which, suddenly, during some seconds, I saw her hold herself for a leap."You talk of 'focussing,' but what else, even in those minutes, were you in fact engaged in?""Ah, then, you do recognise them," I cried--"those minutes?"She took her jump, though with something of a flop."Yes--as, consenting thus to be catechised, I cudgel my brain for your amusement--I do recognise them.I remember what I thought.You focussed--I felt you focus.I saw you wonder whereabouts, in what you call our associated speculation, Iwould by that time be.I asked myself whether you'd understand if I should try to convey to you simply by my expression such a look as would tell you all.By 'all' I meant the fact that, sorry as I was for you--or perhaps for myself--it had struck me as only fair to let you know as straight as possible that I was nowhere.That was why I stared so, and I of course couldn't explain to you," she lucidly pursued, "to whom my stare had reference."I hung on her lips."But you can NOW?"
"Perfectly.To Mr.Long."
I remained suspended."Ah, but this is lovely! It's what I want."I saw I should have more of it, and more in fact came."You were saying just now what you were full of, and I can do the same.I was full of HIM."I, on my side, was now full of eagerness."Yes? He had left you full as he walked away?"She winced a little at this renewed evocation of his retreat, but she took it as she had not done before, and I felt that with another push she would be fairly afloat."He had reason to walk!"I wondered."What had you said to him?"
She pieced it out."Nothing--or very little.But I had listened.""And to WHAT?"
"To what he says.To his platitudes."
"His platitudes?" I stared."Long's?"
"Why, don't you know he's a prize fool?"
I mused, sceptical but reasonable."He WAS.""He IS!"
Mrs.Briss was superb, but, as I quickly felt I might remind her, there was her possibly weak judgment."Your confidence is splendid; only mustn't I remember that your sense of the finer kinds of cleverness isn't perhaps absolutely secure? Don't you know?--you also, till just now, thought MEa prize fool."
If I had hoped, however, here to trip her up, I had reckoned without the impulse, and even perhaps the example, that she properly owed to me.
"Oh, no--not anything of that sort, you, at all.Only an intelligent man gone wrong."I followed, but before I caught up, "Whereas Long's only a stupid man gone right?" I threw out.
It checked her too briefly, and there was indeed something of my own it brought straight back."I thought that just what you told me, this morning or yesterday, was that you had never known a case of the conversion of an idiot."I laughed at her readiness.Well, I had wanted to make her fight! "It's true it would have been the only one.""Ah, you'll have to do without it!" Oh, she was brisk now."And if you know what I think of him, you know no more than HE does.""You mean you told him?"
She hung fire but an instant."I told him, practically--and it was in fact all I did have to say to him.It was enough, however, and he disgustedly left me on it.Then it was that, as you gave me the chance, I tried to telegraph you--to say to you on the spot and under the sharp impression:
'What on earth do you mean by your nonsense? It doesn't hold water!' It's a pity I didn't succeed!" she continued--for she had become almost voluble.
"It would have settled the question, and I should have gone to bed."I weighed it with the grimace that, I feared, had become almost as fixed as Mrs.Server's."It would have settled the question perhaps; but I should have lost this impression of you.""Oh, this impression of me!"