named could, at any rate--to do them all justice--affect us as
an intellectual ruin. It was natural therefore for Mrs. Brissenden to
conclude with scepticism. "She may exist--and exist as you require her;
but what, after all, proves that she's here? She mayn't have come down
with him. Does it necessarily follow that they always go about
together?"

I was ready to declare that it necessarily followed. I had my idea, and
I didn't see why I shouldn't bring it out. "It's my belief that he no
more goes away without her than you go away without poor Briss."

She surveyed me in splendid serenity. "But what have we in common?"

"With the parties to an abandoned flirtation? Well, you've in common
your mutual attachment and the fact that you're thoroughly happy
together."

"Ah," she good-humouredly answered, "we don't flirt!"

"Well, at all events, you don't separate. He doesn't really suffer you
out of his sight, and, to circulate in the society you adorn, you don't
leave him at home."

"Why shouldn't I?" she asked, looking at me, I thought, just a trifle
harder.

"It isn't a question of why you shouldn't--it's a question of whether
you do. You don't--do you? That's all."

She thought it over as if for the first time. "It seems to me I often
leave him when I don't want him."

"Oh, when you don't want him--yes. But when don't you want him? You want
him when you want to be right, and you want to be right when you mix in
a scene like this. I mean," I continued for my private amusement, "when
you want to be happy. Happiness, you know, is, to a lady in the full
tide of social success, even more becoming than a new French frock. You
have the advantage, for your beauty, of being admirably married. You
bloom in your husband's presence. I don't say he need always be at your
elbow; I simply say that you're most completely yourself when he's not
far off. If there were nothing else there would be the help given you by
your quiet confidence in his lawful passion."

"I'm bound to say," Mrs. Brissenden replied, "that such help is
consistent with his not having spoken to me since we parted, yesterday,
to come down here by different trains. We haven't so much as met since
our arrival. My finding him so indispensable is consistent with my not
having so much as looked at him. Indispensable, please, for what?"

"For your not being without him."

"What then do I do _with_ him?"

I hesitated--there were so many ways of putting it; but