Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/166

152 "To break down? It has done everything in life to build it up."

"In spite of the particular circumstance?" At this point even Mrs. Beever's directness failed.

That of her visitor, however, was equal to the occasion. "The particular circumstance of her chucking me because of the sudden glimpse given her, by Mrs. Bream's danger, of the possibility of a far better match?" He gave a laugh drier than her own had just been, the ring of an irony from which long, hard thought had pressed all the savour. "That 'particular circumstance,' dear madam, is every bit that's the matter with me!"

"You regard it with extraordinary coolness, but I presumed to allude to it"

"Because," Dennis broke in with lucidity, "I myself made no bones of doing so on the only other occasion on which we've met?"

"The fact that we both equally saw, that we both equally judged," said Mrs. Beever, "was on that occasion really the only thing that had time to pass between us. It's a tie, but it's a slender one, and I'm all the more flattered that it should have had any force to make you care to see me again."