ow break into laughter. "You found it so natural
then--and you so rather liked it--to make up your mind of a sudden that
you had been steeped in the last intellectual intimacy with a maniac?"

She thought once more, and then, as I myself had just previously done,
came up in another place. "I had at the moment you speak of wholly given
up any idea of Lady John."

But it was so feeble it made me smile. "Of course you had, you poor
innocent! You couldn't otherwise, hours before, have strapped the saddle
so tight on another woman."

"I had given up everything," she stubbornly continued.

"It's exactly what, in reference to that juncture, I perfectly embrace."

"Well, even in reference to that juncture," she resumed, "you may catch
me as much as you like." With which, suddenly, during some seconds, I
saw her hold herself for a leap. "You talk of 'focussing,' but what
else, even in those minutes, were you in fact engaged in?"

"Ah, then, you do recognise them," I cried--"those minutes?"

She took her jump, though with something of a flop. "Yes--as, consenting
thus to be catechised, I cudgel my brain for your amusement--I do
recognise them. I remember what I thought. You focussed--I felt you
focus. I saw you wonder whereabouts, in what you call our associated
speculation, I would by that time be. I asked myself whether you'd
understand if I should try to convey to you simply by my expression such
a look as would tell you all. By 'all' I meant the fact that, sorry as I
was for you--or perhaps for myself--it had struck me as only fair to let
you know as straight as possible that I was nowhere. That was why I
stared so, and I of course couldn't explain to you," she lucidly
pursued, "to whom my stare had reference."

I hung on her lips. "But you can _now_?"

"Perfectly. To Mr. Long."

I remained suspended. "Ah, but this is lovely! It's what I want."

I saw I should have more of it, and more in fact came. "You were saying
just now what you were full of, and I can do the same. I was full of
_him_."

I, on my side, was now full of eagerness. "Yes? He had left you full as
he walked away?"

She winced a little at this renewed evocation of his retreat, but she
took it as she had not done before, and I felt that with another push
she would be fairly afloat. "He had reason to walk!"

I wondered. "What had you said to him?"

She pieced it out. "Nothing--or very little. But I had listened."

"And to _what_?"

"To what h