all! But my point is
precisely, for the present, that you do deny it."

"Of course I deny it," said Mrs. Briss.

I took a moment, but my silence held her. "Your 'of course' would be
what I would again contest, what I would denounce and brand as the word
too much--the word that spoils, were it not that it seems best, that it
in any case seems necessary, to let all question of your consistency
go."

On that I had paused, and, as I felt myself still holding her, I was not
surprised when my pause had an effect. "You do let it go?"

She had tried, I could see, to put the inquiry as all ironic. But it was
not all ironic; it was, in fact, little enough so to suggest for me some
intensification--not quite, I trust, wanton--of her suspense. I should
be at a loss to say indeed how much it suggested or half of what it
told. These things again almost violently moved me, and if I, after an
instant, in my silence, turned away, it was not only to keep her
waiting, but to make my elation more private. I turned away to that tune
that I literally, for a few minutes, quitted her, availing myself thus,
superficially, of the air of weighing a consequence. I wandered off
twenty steps and, while I passed my hand over my troubled head, looked
vaguely at objects on tables and sniffed absently at flowers in bowls. I
don't know how long I so lost myself, nor quite why--as I must for some
time have kept it up--my companion didn't now really embrace her
possible alternative of rupture and retreat. Or rather, as to her action
in this last matter, I am, and was on the spot, clear: I knew at that
moment how much _she_ knew she must not leave me without having got from
me. It came back in waves, in wider glimpses, and produced in so doing
the excitement I had to control. It could _not_ but be exciting to talk,
as we talked, on the basis of those suppressed processes and unavowed
references which made the meaning of our meeting so different from its
form. We knew ourselves--what moved me, that is, was that she knew
me--to mean, at every point, immensely more than I said or than she
answered; just as she saw me, at the same points, measure the space by
which her answers fell short. This made my conversation with her a
totally other and a far more interesting thing than any colloquy I had
ever enjoyed; it had even a sharpness that had not belonged, a few hours
before, to my extraordinary interview with Mrs. Server. She couldn't
afford to quarrel with