o pick you up, wasn't this also"--she roundly put it to
me--"a good deal because you've been nursing all day the grievance with
which I this morning so comfortably furnished you?"

I just waited, but fairly for admiration. "Oh, I certainly had my
reasons--as I've no less certainly had my luck--for not indeed deserting
our dear little battered, but still just sufficiently buoyant vessel,
from which everyone else appears, I recognise, to _s'etre sauve_. She'll
float a few minutes more! But (before she sinks!) do you mean by my
grievance----"

"Oh, you know what I mean by your grievance!" _She_ had no intention,
Mrs. Briss, of sinking. "I was to give you time to make up your mind
that Mrs. Server was our lady. You so resented, for some reason, my
suggesting it that I scarcely believed you'd consider it at all; only I
hadn't forgotten, when I spoke to you a while since, that you had
nevertheless handsomely promised me that you would do your best."

"Yes, and, still more handsomely, that if I changed my mind, I would
eat, in your presence, for my error, the largest possible slice of
humble pie. If you didn't see this morning," I continued, "quite why I
should have cared so much, so I don't quite see why, in your different
way, _you_ should; at the same time that I do full justice to the good
faith with which you've given me my chance. Please believe that if I
_could_ candidly embrace that chance I should feel all the joy in the
world in repaying you. It's only, alas! because I cling to my candour
that I venture to disappoint you. If I cared this morning it was really
simple enough. You didn't convince me, but I should have cared just as
much if you had. I only didn't see what _you_ saw. I needed more than
you could then give me. I knew, you see, what I needed--I mean before I
struck! It was the element of collateral support that we both lacked. I
couldn't do without it as you could. This was what I, clumsily enough,
tried to show you I felt. You, on your side," I pursued, "grasped
admirably the evident truth that that element _could_ be present only in
such doses as practically to escape detection." I kept it up as she had
done, and I remember striking myself as scarce less excitedly voluble. I
was conscious of being at a point at which I should have to go straight,
to go fast, to go it, as the phrase is, blind, in order to go at all. I
was also conscious--and it came from the look with which she listened to
me and that to