ce of some
incalculable catastrophe or some public ugliness. It wasn't for me
definitely to image the logical result of a verification by the sense of
others of the matter of my vision; but the thing had only to hang before
me as a chance for me to feel that I should utterly object to it, though
I may appear to weaken this statement if I add that the opportunity to
fix the degree of my actual companion's betrayed mystification was
almost a spell. This, I conceive, was just by reason of what was at
stake. How could I happily tell her what I was trying to find out?--tell
her, that is, not too much for security and yet enough for relief? The
best answer seemed a brave jump. I was conscious of a certain credit
open with her in my appearance of intellectual sympathy.

"Well," I brought out at last, "I'm quite aching to ask you if you'll
forgive me a great liberty, which I owe to your candid challenge my
opportunity to name. Will you allow me to say frankly that I think you
play a dangerous game with poor Briss, in whom I confess I'm interested?
I don't of course speak of the least danger to yourself; but it's an
injustice to any man to make use of him quite so flagrantly. You don't
in the least flatter yourself that the poor fellow is in love with
you--you wouldn't care a bit if he were. Yet you're willing to make him
think you like him, so far as that may be necessary to explain your so
frequently ingenious appropriation of him. He doesn't like you _too_
much, as yet; doesn't even like you quite enough. But your potency may,
after all, work on him, and then, as your interest is so obviously quite
elsewhere, what will happen will be that you'll find, to your
inconvenience, that you've gone too far. A man never likes a woman
enough unless he likes her _more_ than enough. Unfortunately it's what
the inveterate ass is sure sooner or later to do."

Lady John looked just enough interested to look detached from most of
the more vulgar liabilities to offence. "Do I understand that to be the
pretty name by which you describe Mr. Briss?"

"He has his share of it, for I'm thinking of the idiots that we everyone
of us are. I throw out a warning against a contingency."

"Are you providing for the contingency of his ceasing to care for his
wife? If you are"--and Lady John's amusement took on a breadth--"you
may be said to have a prudent mind and to be taking time by the
forelock."

At this I pricked up my ears. "Do you mean because