perhaps because I had by
this time in a measure expressed, in terms however general, the interest
with which he inspired me, that I now found myself free to shift the
ground of my indiscretion. I only wanted him to know that on the
question of Mrs. Server I was prepared to go as far with him as he
should care to move. How it came to me now that he was _the_ absolutely
safe person in the house to talk of her with! "I was too far away from
you to hear," I had gone on; "and I could only judge of her flow of
conversation from the animated expression of her face. It was
extraordinarily animated. But that, I admit," I added, "strikes one
always as a sort of _parti pris_ with her. She's never _not_
extraordinarily animated."

"She has no flow of conversation whatever," said Guy Brissenden.

I considered. "Really?"

He seemed to look at me quite without uneasiness now. "Why, haven't you
seen for yourself----?"

"How the case stands with her on that head? Do you mean haven't I talked
with her? Well, scarcely; for it's a fact that every man in the house
_but_ I strikes me as having been deluged with that privilege: if
indeed," I laughed, "her absence of topics suffers it to be either a
privilege or a deluge! She affects me, in any case, as determined to
have nothing to do with me. She walks all the rest of you about; she
gives you each your turn; me only she skips, she systematically ignores.
I'm half consoled for it, however," I wound up, "by seeing what short
innings any individual of you has. You personally strike me as having
had the longest."

Brissenden appeared to wonder where I was coming out, yet not as if he
feared it. There was even a particular place, if I could but guess it,
where he would have liked me to come. "Oh, she's extremely charming. But
of course she's strikingly odd."

"Odd?--really?"

"Why, in the sense, I mean, that I thought you suggested you've
noticed."

"That of extravagant vivacity? Oh, I've had to notice it at a distance,
without knowing what it represents."

He just hesitated. "You haven't any idea at all what it represents?"

"How should I have," I smiled, "when she never comes near me? I've
thought _that_, as I tell you, marked. What does her avoidance of _me_
represent? Has she happened, with you, to throw any light on it?"

"I think," said Brissenden after another moment, "that she's rather
afraid of you."

I could only be surprised. "The most harmless man in the house?"

"_