That she _is_ so awfully radiant.
That she's so tremendously happy. It's the question," he explained, "of
what in the world she has to make her so."

I winced a little, but tried not to show it. "My dear man, how do _I_
know?"

"She _thinks_ you know," he after a moment answered.

I could only stare. "Mrs. Server thinks I know what makes her happy?" I
the more easily represented such a conviction as monstrous in that it
truly had its surprise for me.

But Brissenden now was all with his own thought. "She _isn't_ happy."

"You mean that that's what's the matter with her under her
appearance----? Then what makes the appearance so extraordinary?"

"Why, exactly what I mention--that one doesn't see anything whatever in
her to correspond to it."

I hesitated. "Do you mean in her circumstances?"

"Yes--or in her character. Her circumstances are nothing wonderful. She
has none too much money; she has had three children and lost them; and
nobody that belongs to her appears ever to have been particularly nice
to her."

I turned it over. "How you _do_ get on with her!"

"Do you call it getting on with her to be the more bewildered the more I
see her?"

"Isn't to say you're bewildered only, on the whole, to say you're
charmed? That always--doesn't it?--describes more or less any engrossed
relation with a lovely lady."

"Well, I'm not sure I'm so charmed." He spoke as if he had thought this
particular question over for himself; he had his way of being lucid
without brightness. "I'm not at all easily charmed, you know," he the
next moment added; "and I'm not a fellow who goes about much after
women."

"Ah, that I never supposed! Why in the world _should_ you? It's the last
thing!" I laughed. "But isn't this--quite (what shall one call it?)
innocently--rather a peculiar case?"

My question produced in him a little gesture of elation--a gesture
emphasised by a snap of his forefinger and thumb. "I knew you knew it
was special! I knew you've been thinking about it!"

"You certainly," I replied with assurance, "have, during the last five
minutes, made me do so with some sharpness. I don't pretend that I don't
now recognise that there _must_ be something the matter. I only
desire--not unnaturally--that there _should_ be, to put me in the right
for having thought, if, as you're so sure, such a freedom as that can be
brought home to me. If Mrs. Server is beautiful and gentle and
strange," I speciously went on, "what are