There must have been a given moment when the need of it--or when, in other words, the truth of my personal state--dawned upon you.That moment is the key to your whole position--the moment for us to fix.""Fix it," said poor Mrs.Briss, "when you like!""I had much rather," I protested, "fix it when YOU like.I want--you surely must understand if I want anything of it at all--to get it absolutely right." Then as this plea seemed still not to move her, I once more compressed my palms."You WON'T help me?"She bridled at last with a higher toss."It wasn't with such views Icame.I don't believe," she went on a shade more patiently, "I don't believe if you want to know the reason--that you're really sincere."Here indeed was an affair."Not sincere--i?""Not properly honest.I mean in giving up.""Giving up what?"
"Why, everything."
"Everything? Is it a question"--I stared--"of THAT?""You would if you WERE honest."
"Everything?" I repeated.
Again she stood to it."Everything."
"But is that quite the readiness I've professed?""If it isn't then, what is?"
I thought a little."Why, isn't it simply a matter rather of the renunciation of a confidence?""In your sense and your truth?" This, she indicated, was all she asked.
"Well, what is that but everything?"
"Perhaps," I reflected, "perhaps." In fact, it no doubt was."We'll take it then for everything, and it's as so taking it that I renounce.
I keep nothing at all.Now do you believe I'm honest?"She hesitated."Well--yes, if you say so.""Ah," I sighed, "I see you don't! What can I do," I asked, "to prove it?""You can easily prove it.You can let me go.""Does it strike you," I considered, "that I should take your going as a sign of your belief?""Of what else, then?"
"Why, surely," I promptly replied, "my assent to your leaving our discussion where it stands would constitute a very different symptom.Wouldn't it much rather represent," I inquired, "a failure of belief on my own part in YOUR honesty? If you can judge me, in short, as only pretending--""Why shouldn't you," she put in for me, "also judge ME? What have Ito gain by pretending?"
"I'll tell you," I returned, laughing, "if you'll tell me what i have."She appeared to ask herself if she could, and then to decide in the negative."If I don't understand you in any way, of course I don't in that.
Put it, at any rate," she now rather wearily quavered, "that one of us has as little to gain as the other.I believe you," she repeated."There!""Thanks," I smiled, "for the way you say it.If you don't, as you say, understand me," I insisted, "it's because you think me crazy.And if you think me crazy I don't see how you CAN leave me."She presently met this."If I believe you're sincere in saying you give up I believe you've recovered.And if I believe you've recovered I don't think you crazy.It's simple enough.""Then why isn't it simple to understand me?"She turned about, and there were moments in her embarrassment, now, from which she fairly drew beauty.Her awkwardness was somehow noble; her sense of her predicament was in itself young."Is it EVER?" she charmingly threw out.
I felt she must see at this juncture how wonderful I found her, and even that that impression--one's whole consciousness of her personal victory--was a force that, in the last resort, was all on her side."It was quite worth your while, this sitting up to this hour, to show a fellow how you bloom when other women are fagged.If that was really, 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 bears.WAS this 'something' your conclusion, then and there, that there's nothing in anything?"She kept her distance."'In anything'?"
