Page:The Sacred Fount (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901).djvu/285

 one's self the last to know. You're perfectly convinced?"

She not ungracefully, for an instant, faltered; but since I really would have it! "Oh, so far as what we've talked of is concerned, perfectly!"

"And it's actually what you've come down then to tell me?"

"Just exactly what. And if it's a surprise to you," she added, "that I should have come down why, I can only say I was prepared for anything."

"Anything?" I smiled.

"In the way of a surprise."

I thought; but her preparation was natural, though in a moment I could match it. "Do you know that's what I was too?"

"Prepared?"

"For anything in the way of a surprise. But only from you," I explained. "And of course—yes," I mused, "I've got it. If I am crazy," I went on—"it's indeed simple."

She appeared, however, to feel, from the influence of my present tone, the impulse, in courtesy, to attenuate. "Oh, I don't pretend it's simple!"

"No? I thought that was just what you did pretend."

"I didn't suppose," said Mrs. Briss, "that you'd like it. I didn't suppose that you'd accept it or even listen to it. But I owed it to you" She hesitated. 279