struck me. "Crazy?"

"Crazy."

I turned it over. "But do you call that intelligible?"

She did it justice. "No: I don't suppose it _can_ be so for you if you
_are_ insane."

I risked the long laugh which might have seemed that of madness. "'If I
am' is lovely!" And whether or not it was the special sound, in my ear,
of my hilarity, I remember just wondering if perhaps I mightn't be.
"Dear woman, it's the point at issue!"

But it was as if she too had been affected. "It's not at issue for me
now."

I gave her then the benefit of my stirred speculation. "It always
happens, of course, that one is one's self the last to know. You're
perfectly convinced?"

She not ungracefully, for an instant, faltered; but since I really would
have it----! "Oh, so far as what we've talked of is concerned,
perfectly!"

"And it's actually what you've come down then to tell me?"

"Just exactly what. And if it's a surprise to you," she added, "that I
_should_ have come down--why, I can only say I was prepared for
anything."

"Anything?" I smiled.

"In the way of a surprise."

I thought; but her preparation was natural, though in a moment I could
match it. "Do you know that's what I was too?"

"Prepared----?"

"For anything in the way of a surprise. But only _from_ you," I
explained. "And of course--yes," I mused, "I've got it. If I _am_
crazy," I went on--"it's indeed simple."

She appeared, however, to feel, from the influence of my present tone,
the impulse, in courtesy, to attenuate. "Oh, I don't pretend it's
simple!"

"No? I thought that was just what you did pretend."

"I didn't suppose," said Mrs. Briss, "that you'd like it. I didn't
suppose that you'd accept it or even listen to it. But I owed it to
you----" She hesitated.

"You owed it to me to let me know what you thought of me even should it
prove very disagreeable?"

That perhaps was more than she could adopt. "I owed it to myself," she
replied with a touch of austerity.

"To let me know I'm demented?"

"To let you know I'm _not_." We each looked, I think, when she had said
it, as if she had done what she said. "That's all."

"All?" I wailed. "Ah, don't speak as if it were so little. It's much.
It's everything."

"It's anything you will!" said Mrs. Briss impatiently. "Good-night."

"Good-night?" I was aghast. "You leave me on it?"

She appeared to profess for an instant all the freshness of her own that
she was pledged to guard. "I must leave you o