r not liking it is what I speak
of as the piece. I hold it, you see, up before you. What, artistically,
would you do with it?"

But one might take a horse to water----! I held it up before her, but I
couldn't make her look at it. "How do you know what I mayn't, or may,
have liked?"

It did bring me to. "Because you were conscious of not telling me? Well,
even if you didn't----!"

"That made no difference," she inquired with a generous derision,
"because you could always imagine? Of course you could always
imagine--which is precisely what is the matter with you! But I'm
surprised at your coming to me with it once more as evidence of
anything."

I stood rebuked, and even more so than I showed her, for she need,
obviously, only decline to take one of my counters to deprive it of all
value as coin. When she pushed it across I had but to pocket it again.
"It _is_ the weakness of my case," I feebly and I daresay awkwardly
mused at her, "that any particular thing you don't grant me becomes
straightway the strength of yours. Of course, however"--and I gave
myself a shake--"I'm absolutely rejoicing (am I not?) in the strength of
yours. The weakness of my own is what, under your instruction, I'm now
going into; but don't you see how much weaker it will show if I draw
from you the full expression of your indifference? How _could_ you in
fact care when what you were at the very moment urging on me so hard was
the extravagance of Mrs. Server's conduct? That extravagance then proved
her, to your eyes, the woman who had a connection with Long to keep the
world off the scent of--though you maintained that in spite of the dust
she kicked up by it she was, at a pinch, now and then to be caught with
him. That instead of being caught with him she was caught only with
Brissenden annoyed you naturally for the moment; but what was that
annoyance compared to your appreciation of her showing--by undertaking
your husband, of all people!--just the more markedly _as_ extravagant?"

She had been sufficiently interested this time to follow me. "What was
it indeed?"

I greeted her acquiescence, but I insisted. "And yet if she _is_
extravagant--what do you do with it?"

"I thought you wouldn't hear of it!" she exclaimed.

I sought to combine firmness with my mildness. "What do you do with it?"

But she could match me at this. "I thought you wouldn't hear of it!"

"It's not a question of _my_ dispositions. It's a question of her having
bee