and when I in fact saw how perplexed she
could be and how little, again, she could enjoy it, I felt anew my
private wonder at her having cared and dared to meet me. Where _was_
enjoyment, for her, where the insolence of success, if the breath of
irony could chill them? Why, since she was bold, should she be
susceptible, and how, since she was susceptible, could she be bold? I
scarce know what, at this moment, determined the divination; but
everything, the distinct and the dim alike, had cleared up the next
instant at the touch of the real truth. The certitude of the source of
my present opportunity had rolled over me before we exchanged another
word. The source was simply Gilbert Long, and she was there because he
had directed it. This connection hooked itself, like a sudden picture
and with a click that fairly resounded through our empty rooms, into the
array of the other connections, to the immense enrichment, as it was
easy to feel, of the occasion, and to the immense confirmation of the
very idea that, in the course of the evening, I had come near dismissing
from my mind as too fantastic even for the rest of the company it
should enjoy there. What I now was sure of flashed back, at any rate,
every syllable of sense I could have desired into the suggestion I had,
after the music, caught from the juxtaposition of these two. Thus
solidified, this conviction, it spread and spread to a distance greater
than I could just then traverse under Mrs. Briss's eyes, but which,
exactly for that reason perhaps, quickened my pride in the kingdom of
thought I had won. I was really not to have felt more, in the whole
business, than I felt at this moment that by my own right hand I had
gained the kingdom. Long and she were together, and I was alone thus in
face of them, but there was none the less not a single flower of the
garden that my woven wreath should lack.

I must have looked queer to my friend as I grinned to myself over this
vow; but my relish of the way I was keeping things together made me
perhaps for the instant unduly rash. I cautioned myself, however,
fortunately, before it could leave her--scared a little, all the same,
even with Long behind her--an advantage to take, and, in infinitely less
time than I have needed to tell it, I had achieved my flight into
luminous ether and, alighting gracefully on my feet, reported myself at
my post. I had in other words taken in both the full prodigy of the
_entente_ between Mrs. S