Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/378

THE BETTER SORT "It's what I told you she would have to be when, some time back, you threw out, as a pure hypothesis, to supply the man with a motive, your exact vision of her. Your motive has come true," Maud went on—"with the difference only, if I understand you, that this doesn't appear the whole of it. That doesn't matter"—she frankly paid him a tribute. "Your forecast was inspiration."

"A stroke of genius"—he had been the first to feel it. But there were matters less clear. "When did you see her last?"

"Four days ago. It was the third time."

"And even then she didn't imagine the truth about him?"

"I don't know, you see," said Maud, "what you call the truth."

"Well, that he quite by that time didn't know where the deuce to turn. That's truth enough."

Maud made sure. "I don't see how she can have known it and not have been upset. She wasn't," said the girl, "upset. She isn't upset. But she's original."

"Well, poor thing," Bight remarked, "she'll have to be?"

"Original?"

"Upset. Yes, and original too, if she doesn't give up the job." It had held him an instant but there were many things. "She sees the wild ass he is, and yet she's willing?"

"'Willing' is just what I asked you three months ago," Maud returned, "how she could be."

He had lost it—he tried to remember. "What then did I say?"

"Well, practically, that women are idiots. Also, I believe, that he's a dazzling beauty."

"Ah yes, he is, poor wretch, though beauty to-day in distress."

"Then there you are," said Maud. They had got 366