woman,
simply, who's happiest?"

"Because Brissenden's the man who is? Precisely!"

On which for a minute, without her going on, we looked at each other.
"Do you really mean that if you only knew _me_ as I am, it would come to
you in the same way to hunt for my confederate? I mean if he weren't
made obvious, you know, by his being my husband."

I turned this over. "If you were only in flirtation--as you reminded me
just now that you're not? Surely!" I declared. "I should arrive at him,
perfectly, after all eliminations, on the principle of looking for the
greatest happiness----"

"Of the smallest number? Well, he may be a small number," she
indulgently sighed, "but he's wholly content! Look at him now there,"
she added the next moment, "and judge." We had resumed our walk and
turned the corner of the house, a movement that brought us into view of
a couple just round the angle of the terrace, a couple who, like
ourselves, must have paused in a sociable stroll. The lady, with her
back to us, leaned a little on the balustrade and looked at the gardens;
the gentleman close to her, with the same support, offered us the face
of Guy Brissenden, as recognisable at a distance as the numbered card of
a "turn"--the black figure upon white--at a music-hall. On seeing us he
said a word to his companion, who quickly jerked round. Then his wife
exclaimed to me--only with more sharpness--as she had exclaimed at Mme.
de Dreuil: "By all that's lovely--May Server!" I took it, on the spot,
for a kind of "Eureka!" but without catching my friend's idea. I was
only aware at first that this idea left me as unconvinced as when the
other possibilities had passed before us. Wasn't it simply the result of
this lady's being the only one we had happened not to eliminate? She had
not even occurred to us. She was pretty enough perhaps for any magic,
but she hadn't the other signs. I didn't believe, somehow--certainly not
on such short notice--either in her happiness or in her flatness. There
was a vague suggestion, of a sort, in our having found her there with
Brissenden: there would have been a pertinence, to our curiosity, or at
least to mine, in this juxtaposition of the two persons who paid, as I
had amused myself with calling it, so heroically; yet I had only to have
it marked for me (to see them, that is, side by side,) in order to feel
how little--at any rate superficially--the graceful, natural, charming
woman ranged herself with the supe