were on the ground, rather," she beautifully smiled, "of dictation."

"Well, I'm that too. I dictate my terms. But my terms are in themselves
the appeal." I was ingenious but patient. "See?"

"How in the world can I see?"

"_Voyons_, then. Light or darkness, my imagination rides me. But of
course if it's all wrong I want to get rid of it. You can't, naturally,
help me to destroy the faculty itself, but you can aid in the defeat of
its application to a particular case. It was because you so smiled,
before, on that application, that I valued even my minor difference with
you; and what I refer to as my loss is the fact that your frown leaves
me struggling alone. The best thing for me, accordingly, as I feel, is
to get rid altogether of the obsession. The way to do that, clearly,
since _you've_ done it, is just to quench the fire. By the fire I mean
the flame of the fancy that blazed so for us this morning. What the
deuce have you, for yourself, poured on it? Tell me," I pleaded, "and
teach me."

Equally with her voice her face echoed me again. "Teach you?"

"To abandon my false gods. Lead me back to peace by the steps _you've_
trod. By so much as they must have remained traceable to you, shall I
find them of interest and profit. They must in fact be most remarkable:
won't they even--for what _I_ may find in them--be more remarkable than
those we should now be taking together if we hadn't separated, if we
hadn't pulled up?" That was a proposition I could present to her with
candour, but before her absence of precipitation had permitted her much
to consider it I had already followed it on. "You'll just tell me,
however, that since I do pull up and turn back with you we shall just
have _not_ separated. Well, then, so much the better--I see you're
right. But I want," I earnestly declared, "not to lose an inch of the
journey."

She watched me now as a Roman lady at the circus may have watched an
exemplary Christian. "The journey has been a very simple one," she said
at last. "With my mind made up on a single point, it was taken at a
stride."

I was all interest. "On a single point?" Then, as, almost excessively
deliberate, she still kept me: "You mean the still commonplace character
of Long's--a--consciousness?"

She had taken at last again the time she required. "Do you know what I
think?"

"It's exactly what I'm pressing you to make intelligible."

"Well," said Mrs. Briss, "I think you're crazy."

It naturally