idea. He didn't say what it was, and I didn't ask, intimating
thereby that I held it to be in this manner we were playing the game;
but I indulgently questioned it in the light of its not yet having
assisted him. He answered that the minutes we had just passed were what
had made the difference; it had sprung from the strong effect produced
on him after she came in with me. "It's but now I really see her. She
did and said nothing special, nothing striking or extraordinary; but
that didn't matter--it never does: one saw how she _is_. She's nothing
but _that_."

"Nothing but what?"

"She's all _in_ it," he insisted. "Or it's all in _her_. It comes to the
same thing."

"Of course it's all in her," I said as impatiently as I could, though
his attestation--for I wholly trusted his perception--left me so much in
his debt. "That's what we start with, isn't it? It leaves us as far as
ever from what we must arrive at."

But he was too interested in his idea to heed my question. He was
wrapped in the "psychologic" glow. "I _have_ her!"

"Ah, but it's a question of having _him_!"

He looked at me on this as if I had brought him back to a mere detail,
and after an instant the light went out of his face. "So it is. I leave
it to you. I don't care." His drop had the usual suddenness of the drops
of the artistic temperament. "Look for the last man," he nevertheless,
but with more detachment, added. "I daresay it would be he."

"The last? In what sense the last?"

"Well, the last sort of creature who could be believed of her."

"Oh," I rejoined as we went on, "the great bar to that is that such a
sort of creature as the last won't _be_ here!"

He hesitated. "So much the better. I give him, at any rate, wherever he
is, up to you."

"Thank you," I returned, "for the beauty of the present! You do see,
then, that our psychologic glow doesn't, after all, prevent the
thing----"

"From being none of one's business? Yes. Poor little woman!" He seemed
somehow satisfied; he threw it all up. "It isn't any of one's business,
is it?"

"Why, that's what I was telling you," I impatiently exclaimed, "that _I_
feel!"

V

The first thing that happened to me after parting with him was to find
myself again engaged with Mrs. Brissenden, still full of the quick
conviction with which I had left her. "It _is_ she--quite unmistakably,
you know. I don't see how I can have been so stupid as not to make it
out. I haven't your clevernes