er. You thought it over. I accuse you of nothing
worse than of _having_ thought it over. But you see what thinking it
over does for it."

The way I said this appeared to amuse him. "I see what it does for
_you_!"

"No, you don't! Not at all yet. That's just the embarrassment."

"Just whose?" If I had thanked him for his patience he showed that he
deserved it. "Just yours?"

"Well, say mine. But when you do----!" And I paused as for the rich
promise of it.

"When I do see where you are, you mean?"

"The only difficulty is whether you _can_ see. But we must try. You've
set me whirling round, but we must go step by step. Oh, but it's all in
your germ!"--I kept that up. "If she isn't now beastly unhappy----"

"She's beastly happy?" he broke in, getting firmer hold, if not of the
real impression he had just been gathering under my eyes, then at least
of something he had begun to make out that my argument required. "Well,
that _is_ the way I see her difference. Her difference, I mean," he
added, in his evident wish to work with me, "her difference from her
other difference! There!" He laughed as if, also, he had found himself
fairly fantastic. "Isn't _that_ clear for you?"

"Crystalline--for _me_. But that's because I know why."

I can see again now the long look that, on this, he gave me. I made out
already much of what was in it. "So then do I!"

"But how in the world----? I know, for myself, _how_ I know."

"So then do I," he after a moment repeated.

"And can you tell me?"

"Certainly. But what I've already named to you--the torch of your
analogy."

I turned this over. "You've made evidently an admirable use of it. But
the wonderful thing is that you seem to have done so without having all
the elements."

He on his side considered. "What do you call all the elements?"

"Oh, it would take me long to tell you!" I couldn't help laughing at the
comparative simplicity with which he asked it. "That's the sort of thing
we just now spoke of taking a day for. At any rate, such as they are,
these elements," I went on, "I believe myself practically in possession
of them. But what I don't quite see is how _you_ can be."

Well, he was able to tell me. "Why in the world shouldn't your analogy
have put me?" He spoke with gaiety, but with lucidity. "I'm not an idiot
either."

"I see." But there was so much!

"Did you think I _was_?" he amiably asked.

"No. I see," I repeated. Yet I didn't, really, fully; which h