with the truth that we're so pulling about laid bare, what you did most
want to show, why, then, you've splendidly triumphed, and I congratulate
and thank you. No," I quickly went on, "I daresay, to do you justice,
the interpretation of my tropes and figures _isn't_ 'ever' perfectly
simple. You doubtless _have_ driven me into a corner with my dangerous
explosive, and my only fair course must be therefore to sit on it till
you get out of the room. I'm sitting on it now; and I think you'll find
you can get out as soon as you've told me _this_. Was the moment your
change of view dawned upon you the moment of our exchanging a while
ago, in the drawing-room, our few words?"

The light that, under my last assurances, had so considerably revived
faded in her a little as she saw me again tackle the theme of her
inconstancy; but the prospect of getting rid of me on these terms made
my inquiry, none the less, worth trying to face. "That moment?" She
showed the effort to think back.

I gave her every assistance. "It was when, after the music, I had been
talking to Lady John. You were on a sofa, not far from us, with Gilbert
Long; and when, on Lady John's dropping me, I made a slight movement
toward you, you most graciously met it by rising and giving me a chance
while Mr. Long walked away."

It was as if I had hung the picture before her, so that she had fairly
to look at it. But the point that she first, in her effort, took up was
not, superficially, the most salient. "Mr. Long walked away?"

"Oh, I don't mean to say that that had anything to do with it."

She continued to think. "To do with what?"

"With the way the situation comes back to me now as possibly marking
your crisis."

She wondered. "Was it a 'situation'?"

"That's just what I'm asking you. _Was_ it? Was it _the_ situation?"

But she had quite fallen away again. "I remember the moment you mean--it
was when I said I would come to you here. But why should it have struck
you as a crisis?"

"It didn't in the least at the time, for I didn't then know you were no
longer 'with' me. But in the light of what I've since learned from you I
seem to recover an impression which, on the spot, was only vague. The
impression," I explained, "of your taking a decision that presented some
difficulty, but that was determined by something that had then--and even
perhaps a little suddenly--come up for you. That's the point"--I
continued to unfold my case--"on which my question