Page:The Sacred Fount (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901).djvu/272

 "Rather!" said Mrs. Briss almost gaily. "Wretchedly indeed in the wrong!"

"Yet only—equally of course," I returned after a brief brooding, "if I come within a conceivability of accepting it. Are you conscious that, in default of Long's own word—equivocal as that word would be—you press it upon me without the least other guarantee?"

"And pray," she asked, "what guarantee had you?"

"For the theory with which we started? Why, our recognised fact. The change in the man. You may say," I pursued, "that I was the first to speak for him; but being the first didn't, in your view, constitute a weakness when it came to your speaking yourself for Mrs. Server. By which I mean," I added, "speaking against her."

She remembered, but not for my benefit. "Well, you then asked me my warrant. And as regards Mr. Long and your speaking against him"

"Do you describe what I say as 'against' him?" I immediately broke in.

It took her but an instant. "Surely—to have made him out horrid."

I could only want to fix it. Horrid'?"

"Why, having such secrets." She was roundly ready now. "Sacrificing poor May."

"But you, dear lady, sacrificed poor May! It didn't strike you as horrid then." 266