a moment before. "Not a
creature has spoken to me."

I felt somehow the wish to make her say it in as many ways as
possible--I seemed so to enjoy her saying it. This helped me to make my
tone approve and encourage. "You've communicated so little with anyone!"
I didn't even make it a question.

It was scarce yet, however, quite good enough. "So little? I've not
communicated the least mite."

"Precisely. But don't think me impertinent for having for a moment
wondered. What I should say to you if you had, you know, would be that
you just accused me."

"Accused you?"

"Of talking too much."

It came back to her dim. "Are we accusing each other?"

Her tone seemed suddenly to put us nearer together than we had ever been
at all. "Dear no," I laughed--"not each other; only with each other's
help, a few of our good friends."

"A few?" She handsomely demurred. "But one or two at the best."

"Or at the worst!"--I continued to laugh. "And not even those, it after
all appears, very much!"

She didn't like my laughter, but she was now grandly indulgent. "Well, I
accuse no one."

I was silent a little; then I concurred. "It's doubtless your best line;
and I really quite feel, at all events, that when you mentioned a while
since that I talk too much you only meant too much to _you_."

"Yes--I wasn't imputing to you the same direct appeal. I didn't
suppose," she explained, "that--to match your own supposition of
_me_--you had resorted to May herself."

"You didn't suppose I had asked her?" The point was positively that she
didn't; yet it made us look at each other almost as hard as if she did.
"No, of course you couldn't have supposed anything so cruel--all the
more that, as you knew, I had not admitted the possibility."

She accepted my assent; but, oddly enough, with a sudden qualification
that showed her as still sharply disposed to make use of any loose scrap
of her embarrassed acuteness. "Of course, at the same time, you yourself
saw that your not admitting the possibility would have taken the edge
from your cruelty. It's not the innocent," she suggestively remarked,
"that we fear to frighten."

"Oh," I returned, "I fear, mostly, I think, to frighten _any_ one. I'm
not particularly brave. I haven't, at all events, in spite of my
certitude, interrogated Mrs. Server, and I give you my word of honour
that I've not had any denial from her to prop up my doubt. It still
stands on its own feet, and it was its own battl