race Brissenden and I had used
together, was not that lady's husband the perfection of a red herring?
Just because, I perceived, the relation that had established itself
between them _was_, for its function, a real relation, the relation of a
fellowship in resistance to doom.

Nothing could have been stranger than for _me_ so to know it was while
the stricken parties themselves were in ignorance; but nothing, at the
same time, could have been, as I have since made out, more magnanimous
than Mrs. Server's attitude. She moved, groping and panting, in the
gathering dusk of her fate, but there were calculations she still could
dimly make. One of these was that she must drag no one else in. I verily
believe that, for that matter, she had scruples, poignant and exquisite,
even about letting our friend himself see how much she liked to be with
him. She wouldn't, at all events, let another see. I saw what I saw, I
felt what I felt, but such things were exactly a sign that I could take
care of myself. There was apparently, I was obliged to admit, but little
apprehension in her of her unduly showing that _our_ meeting had been
anything of a blessing to her. There was no one indeed just then to be
the wiser for it; I might perhaps else even have feared that she would
have been influenced to treat the incident as closed. I had, for that
matter, no wish to prolong it beyond her own convenience; it had already
told me everything it could possibly tell. I thought I knew moreover
what she would have got from it. I preferred, none the less, that we
should separate by my own act; I wanted not to see her move in order to
be free of me. So I stood up, to put her more at her ease, and it was
while I remained before her that I tried to turn to her advantage what I
had committed myself to about Brissenden.

"I had a fancy, at any rate, that he was looking for you--all the more
that he didn't deny it."

She had not moved; she had let me take my hand from her own with as
little sign as on her first feeling its touch. She only kept her eyes on
me. "What made you have such a fancy?"

"What makes me ever have any?" I laughed. "My extraordinary interest in
my fellow-creatures. I have more than most men. I've never really seen
anyone with half so much. That breeds observation, and observation
breeds ideas. Do you know what it has done?" I continued. "It has bred
for me the idea that Brissenden's in love with you."

There was something in her ey