"And that I could only be, accordingly, out of my mind? Come," I patiently pursued; "such a perception as that had, at some instant or other, to BEGIN;and I'm only trying to aid you to recollect when the devil it did!""Does it particularly matter?" Mrs.Briss inquired.
I felt my chin."That depends a little--doesn't it?--on what you mean by 'matter'! It matters for your meeting my curiosity, and that matters, in its turn, as we just arranged, for my releasing you.You may ask of course if my curiosity itself matters; but to that, fortunately, my reply can only be of the clearest.The satisfaction of my curiosity is the pacification of my mind.We've granted, we've accepted, I again press upon you, in respect to that precarious quantity, its topsy-turvy state.Only give me a lead;I don't ask you for more.Let me for an instant see play before me any feeble reflection whatever of the flash of new truth that unsettled you."I thought for a moment that, in her despair, she would find something that would do.But she only found: "It didn't come in a flash."I remained all patience."It came little by little? It began then perhaps earlier in the day than the moment to which I allude? And yet," I continued, "we were pretty well on in the day, I must keep in mind, when I had your last news of your credulity.""My credulity?"
"Call it then, if you don't like the word, your sympathy."I had given her time, however, to produce at last something that, it visibly occurred to her, might pass."As soon as I was not with you--Imean with you personally--you NEVER had my sympathy.""Is my person then so irresistible?"
Well, she was brave."It WAS.But it's not, thank God, now!""Then there we are again at our mystery! I don't think, you know," Imade out for her, "it was my person, really, that gave its charm to my theory; I think it was much more my theory that gave its charm to my person.
My person, I flatter myself, has remained through these few hours--hours of tension, but of a tension, you see, purely intellectual--as good as ever; so that if we're not, even in our anomalous situation, in danger from any such source, it's simply that my theory is dead and that the blight of the rest is involved."My words were indeed many, but she plumped straight through them."As soon as I was away from you I hated you.""Hated ME?"
"Well, hated what you call 'the rest'--hated your theory.""I see.Yet," I reflected, "you're not at present--though you wish to goodness, no doubt, you WERE--away from me.""Oh, I don't care now," she said with courage; "since--for you see Ibelieve you--we're away from your delusions.""You wouldn't, in spite of your belief,"--I smiled at her--"like to be a little further off yet?" But before she could answer, and because also, doubtless, the question had too much the sound of a taunt, I came up, as if for her real convenience, quite in another place."Perhaps my idea--my timing, that is, of your crisis--is the result, in my mind, of my own association with that particular instant.It comes back to me that what I was most full of while your face signed to me and your voice then so graciously confirmed it, and while too, as I've said, Long walked away--what I was most full of, as a consequence of another go, just ended, at Lady John, was, once more, this same Lady John's want of adjustability to the character you and I, in our associated speculation of the morning, had so candidly tried to fit her with.I was still even then, you see, speculating--all on my own hook, alas!--and it had just rolled over me with renewed force that she was nothing whatever, not the least little bit, to our purpose.
The moment, in other words, if you understand, happened to be one of MYmoments; so that, by the same token, I simply wondered if it mightn't likewise have happened to be one of yours.""It WAS one of mine," Mrs.Briss replied as promptly as I could reasonably have expected; "in the sense that--as you've only to consider--it was to lead more or less directly to these present words of ours."If I had only to consider, nothing was more easy; but each time I considered, I was ready to show, the less there seemed left by the act."Ah, but you had then ALREADY backed out.Won't you understand--for you're a little discouraging--that I want to catch you at the earlier stage?""To 'catch' me?" I had indeed expressions!
"Absolutely catch! Focus you under the first shock of the observation that was to make everything fall to pieces for you.""But I've told you," she stoutly resisted, "that there was no 'first'
shock."
"Well, then, the second or the third."
"There was no shock," Mrs.Briss magnificently said, "at all."It made me somehow break into laughter."You found it so natural then--and you so rather liked it--to make up your mind of a sudden that you had been steeped in the last intellectual intimacy with a maniac?"She thought once more, and then, as I myself had just previously done, came up in another place."I had at the moment you speak of wholly given up any idea of Lady John."But it was so feeble it made me smile."Of course you had, you poor innocent! You couldn't otherwise, hours before, have strapped the saddle so tight on another woman.""I had given up everything," she stubbornly continued.