ve you really to be."

"Oh, I'm fond enough of you," she said. "Fond enough to say that I wish
every man was like you. But there are others to be considered." She was
thinking, as a matter of fact, of poor Maisie. She picked a little piece
of pellitory out of the breast-high wall in front of us. She chafed it
for a long minute between her finger and thumb, then she threw it over
the coping.

"Oh, I accept the situation," she said at last, "if you can."

VI I REMEMBER laughing at the phrase, "accept the situation", which she
seemed to repeat with a gravity too intense. I said to her something
like:

"It's hardly as much as that. I mean, that I must claim the liberty of a
free American citizen to think what I please about your co-religionists.
And I suppose that Florence must have liberty to think what she pleases
and to say what politeness allows her to say."

"She had better," Leonora answered, "not say one single word against
my people or my faith." It struck me at the time, that there was an
unusual, an almost threatening, hardness in her voice. It was almost
as if she were trying to convey to Florence, through me, that she
would seriously harm my wife if Florence went to something that was an
extreme. Yes, I remember thinking at the time that it was almost as if
Leonora were saying, through me to Florence:

"You may outrage me as you will; you may take all that I personally
possess, but do not you care to say one single thing in view of the
situation that that will set up--against the faith that makes me become
the doormat for your feet."

But obviously, as I saw it, that could not be her meaning. Good people,
be they ever so diverse in creed, do not threaten each other. So that I
read Leonora's words to mean just no more than: "It would be better if
Florence said nothing at all against my co-religionists, because it is a
point that I am touchy about."

That was the hint that, accordingly, I conveyed to Florence when,
shortly afterwards, she and Edward came down from the tower. And I want
you to understand that, from that moment until after Edward and the girl
and Florence were all dead together, I had never the remotest glimpse,
not the shadow of a suspicion, that there was anything wrong, as the
saying is. For five minutes, then, I entertained the possibility that
Leonora might be jealous; but there was never another flicker in that
flame-like personality. How in the world should I get it?

For, all that