nomenon thus
presented; it had been precisely framed, on the contrary, to hang
together with the observed inveteracy of escape, on the part of the two
persons about whom it busied itself, from public juxtaposition of more
than a moment. I was fairly upset by the need to consider at this late
hour whether going in for a new theory or bracing myself for new facts
would hold out to me the better refuge. It is perhaps not too much to
say that I should scarce have been able to sit still at all but for the
support afforded me by the oddity of the separation of Lord Lutley and
Mrs. Froome; which, though resting on a general appearance directly
opposed to that of my friends, offered somehow the relief of a
suggestive analogy. What I could directly clutch at was that if the
exception did prove the rule in the one case it might equally prove it
in the other. If on a rare occasion one of these couples might be
divided, so, by as uncommon a chance, the other might be joined; the
only difference being in the gravity of the violated law. For which pair
was the betrayal greatest? It was not till dinner was nearly ended and
the ladies were about to withdraw that I recovered lucidity to make out
how much more machinery would have had to be put into motion
consistently to prevent, than once in a way to minimise, the
disconcerting accident.

All accidents, I must add, were presently to lose themselves in the
unexpectedness of my finding myself, before we left the dining-room, in
easy talk with Gilbert Long--talk that was at least easy for _him_,
whatever it might have struck me as necessarily destined to be for me. I
felt as he approached me--for he did approach me--that it was somehow
"important"; I was so aware that something in the state of my conscience
would have prevented me from assuming conversation between us to be at
this juncture possible. The state of my conscience was that I knew too
much--that no one had really any business to know what I knew. If he
suspected but the fiftieth part of it there was no simple spirit in
which he could challenge me. It would have been simple of course to
desire to knock me down, but that was barred by its being simple to
excess. It wouldn't even have been enough for him merely to ground it
on a sudden fancy. It fitted, in fine, with my cogitations that it was
so significant for him to wish to speak to me that I didn't envy him his
attempt at the particular shade of assurance required for carryin