Page:The Sacred Fount (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901).djvu/313

 talk. You're cruel moreover," she continued, "to my joke. It was Briss, poor dear, who talked—though, I mean, only to me. He knows."

I cast about. "Since when?"

But she had it ready. "Since this evening."

Once more I couldn't but smile. "Just in time then! And the way he knows?"

"Oh, the way!"—she had at this a slight drop. But she came up again. "I take his word."

"You haven't then asked him?"

"The beauty of it was—half an hour ago, upstairs—that I hadn't to ask. He came out with it himself, and that—to give you the whole thing—was, if you like, my moment. He dropped it on me," she continued to explain, "without in the least, sweet innocent, knowing what he was doing; more, at least, that is, than give her away."

"Which," I concurred, "was comparatively nothing!"

But she had no ear for irony, and she made out still more of her story. "He's simple—but he sees."

"And when he sees"—I completed the picture—"he luckily tells."

She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but without prejudice to his acuteness and to what had been in him moreover a natural revulsion. "He has seen, in short; there comes some chance when one does. His, as luckily as you please, came this 307