t wouldn't have been a danger, perhaps, if the two victims
hadn't slipped together; and more amazing, doubtless, than anything else
was the recognition by my sacrificing couple of the opportunity drawn by
my sacrificed from being conjoined in my charity. How could they know,
Gilbert Long and Mrs. Briss, that actively to communicate a
consciousness to my other friends had no part in my plan? The most I had
dreamed of, I could honourably feel, was to assure myself of their
independent possession of one. These things were with me while, as I
have noted, I made Grace Brissenden wait, and it was also with me that,
though I condoned her deviation, she must take it from me as a charity.
I had presently achieved another of my full revolutions, and I faced her
again with a view of her overture and my answer to her last question.
The terms were not altogether what my pity could have wished, but I
sufficiently kept everything together to have to see that there were
limits to my choice. "Yes, I let it go, your change of front, though it
vexes me a little--and I'll in a moment tell you why--to have to. But
let us put it that it's on a condition."

"Change of front?" she murmured while she looked at me. "Your
expressions are not of the happiest."

But I saw it was only again to cover a doubt. My condition, for her, was
questionable, and I felt it would be still more so on her hearing what
it was. Meanwhile, however, in spite of her qualification of it, I had
fallen back, once and for all, on pure benignity. "It scarce matters if
I'm clumsy when you're practically so bland. I wonder if you'll
understand," I continued, "if I make you an explanation."

"Most probably," she answered, as handsome as ever, "not."

"Let me at all events try you. It's moreover the one I just promised;
which was no more indeed than the development of a feeling I've already
permitted myself to show you. I lose"--I brought it out--"by your
agreeing with me!"

"'Lose'?"

"Yes; because while we disagreed you were, in spite of that, on the
right side."

"And what do you call the right side?"

"Well"--I brought it out again--"on the same side as my imagination."

But it gave her at least a chance. "Oh, your imagination!"

"Yes--I know what you think of it; you've sufficiently hinted how little
that is. But it's precisely because you regard it as rubbish that I now
appeal to you."

She continued to guard herself by her surprises. "Appeal? I thought you