"We ought to remember," I pursued, even at the risk of showing as too sententious, "that success in such an inquiry may perhaps be more embarrassing than failure.To nose about for a relation that a lady has her reasons for keeping secret--""Is made not only quite inoffensive, I hold"--he immediately took me up--"but positively honourable, by being confined to psychologic evidence."I wondered a little."Honourable to whom?""Why, to the investigator.Resting on the KIND of signs that the game takes account of when fairly played--resting on psychologic signs alone, it's a high application of intelligence.What's ignoble is the detective and the keyhole.""I see," I after a moment admitted."I did have, last night, my scruples, but you warm me up.Yet I confess also," I still added, "that if I do muster the courage of my curiosity, it's a little because I feel even yet, as I think you also must, altogether destitute of a material clue.If I had a material clue I should feel ashamed: the fact would be deterrent.I start, for my part, at any rate, quite in the dark--or in a darkness lighted, at best, by what you have called the torch of my analogy.The analogy too,"I wound up, "may very well be only half a help.It was easy to find poor Briss, because poor Briss is here, and it's always easy, moreover, to find a husband.But say Mrs.Server's poor Briss--or his equivalent, whoever it may be--ISN'T here."We had begun to walk away with this, but my companion pulled up at the door of the room."I'm sure he is.She tells me he's near.""'Tells' you?" I challenged it, but I uncomfortably reflected that it was just what I had myself told Mrs.Brissenden.
"She wouldn't be as she is if he weren't.Her being as she is is the sign of it.He wasn't present--that is he wasn't present in her life at all--when I painted her; and the difference we're impressed with is exactly the proof that he is now."My difficulty in profiting by the relief he had so unconsciously afforded me resided of course in my not feeling free to show for quite as impressed as he was.I hadn't really made out at all what he was impressed WITH, and I should only have spoiled everything by inviting him to be definite.
This was a little of a worry, for I should have liked to know; but on the other hand I felt my track at present effectually covered."Well, then, grant he's one of us.There are more than a dozen of us--a dozen even with you and me and Brissenden counted out.The hitch is that we're nowhere without a primary lead.As to Brissenden there WAS the lead.""You mean as afforded by his wife's bloated state, which was a signal?""Precisely: for the search for something or other that would help to explain it.Given his wife's bloated state, his own shrunken one was what was to have been predicated.I knew definitely, in other words, what to look for.""Whereas we don't know here?"
"Mrs.Server's state, unfortunately," I replied, "is not bloated."He laughed at my "unfortunately," though recognising that I spoke merely from the point of view of lucidity, and presently remarked that he had his own idea.He didn't say what it was, and I didn't ask, intimating thereby that I held it to be in this manner we were playing the game; but I indulgently questioned it in the light of its not yet having assisted him.He answered that the minutes we had just passed were what had made the difference;it had sprung from the strong effect produced on him after she came in with me."It's but now I really see her.She did and said nothing special, nothing striking or extraordinary; but that didn't matter--it never does:
one saw how she is.She's nothing but THAT.""Nothing but what?"
"She's all in it," he insisted."Or it's all in HER.It comes to the same thing.""Of course it's all in her," I said as impatiently as I could, though his attestation--for I wholly trusted his perception--left me so much in his debt."That's what we start with, isn't it? It leaves us as far as ever from what we must arrive at."But he was too interested in his idea to heed my question.He was wrapped in the "psychologic" glow."I HAVE her!""Ah, but it's a question of having HIM!"
He looked at me on this as if I had brought him back to a mere detail, and after an instant the light went out of his face."So it is.I leave it to you.I don't care." His drop had the usual suddenness of the drops of the artistic temperament."Look for the last man," he nevertheless, but with more detachment, added."I daresay it would be he.""The last? In what sense the last?"
"Well, the last sort of creature who could be believed of her.""Oh," I rejoined as we went on, "the great bar to that is that such a sort of creature as the last won't BE here!"He hesitated."So much the better.I give him, at any rate, wherever he is, up to you.""Thank you," I returned, "for the beauty of the present! You do see, then, that our psychologic glow doesn't, after all, prevent the thing--""From being none of one's business? Yes.Poor little woman!" He seemed somehow satisfied; he threw it all up."It isn't any of one's business, is it?""Why, that's what I was telling you," I impatiently exclaimed, "that i feel!"