reason,
however," I quickly added, "that, before my frail, but, as I maintain,
quite sublime structure, you honour me, for a few seconds, with an
intelligent look at it. I seem myself to see it again, perfect in every
part," I pursued, "even while I thus speak to you, and to feel afresh
that, weren't the wretched accident of its weak foundation, it wouldn't
have the shadow of a flaw. I've spoken of it in my conceivable regret,"
I conceded, "as already a mere heap of disfigured fragments; but that
was the extravagance of my vexation, my despair. It's in point of fact
so beautifully fitted that it comes apart piece by piece--which, so far
as that goes, you've seen it do in the last quarter of an hour at your
own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one by one, yourself and
watching me stack them along the ground. They're not even in this
state--see!" I wound up--"a pile of ruins!" I wound up, as I say, but
only for long enough to have, with the vibration, the exaltation, of my
eloquence, my small triumph as against her great one. "I should almost
like, piece by piece, to hand them back to you." And this time I
completed my figure. "I believe that, for the very charm of it, you'd
find yourself placing them by your own sense in their order and rearing
once more the splendid pile. Will you take just _one_ of them from me
again," I insisted, "and let me see if only to have it in your hands
doesn't positively start you off? That's what I meant just now by asking
you for another answer." She had remained silent, as if really in the
presence of the rising magnificence of my metaphor, and it was not too
late for the one chance left me. "There was nothing, you know, I had so
fitted as your account of poor Mrs. Server when, on our seeing them,
from the terrace, together below, you struck off your explanation that
old Briss was _her_ screen for Long."

"Fitted?"--and there was sincerity in her surprise. "I thought my stupid
idea the one for which you had exactly no use!"

"I had no use," I instantly concurred, "for your stupid idea, but I had
great use for your stupidly, alas! having it. _That_ fitted
beautifully," I smiled, "till the piece came out. And even now," I
added, "I don't feel it quite accounted for."

"Their being there together?"

"No. Your not liking it that they were."

She stared. "Not liking it?"

I could see how little indeed she minded now, but I also kept the thread
of my own intellectual history. "Yes. You