nly someone you want to
protect. Weak man," she exclaimed with an assurance from which, I
confess, I was to take alarm, "something has happened to you since we
separated! Weak man," she repeated with dreadful gaiety, "you've been
squared!"

I literally blushed for her. "Squared?"

"Does it inconveniently happen that you find you're in love with her
yourself?"

"Well," I replied on quick reflection, "do, if you like, call it that;
for you see what a motive it gives me for being, in such a matter as
this wonderful one that you and I happened to find ourselves for a
moment making so free with, absolutely sure about her. I _am_ absolutely
sure. There! She won't do. And for your postulate that she's at the
present moment in some sequestered spot in Long's company, suffer me
without delay to correct it. It won't hold water. If you'll go into the
library, through which I have just passed, you'll find her there in the
company of the Comte de Dreuil."

Mrs. Briss stared again. "Already? She _was_, at any rate, with Mr.
Long, and she told me on my meeting them that they had just come from
the pastels."

"Exactly. They met there--she and I having gone together; and they
retired together under my eyes. They must have parted, clearly, the
moment after."

She took it all in, turned it all over. "Then what does that prove but
that they're afraid to be seen?"

"Ah, they're _not_ afraid, since both you and I saw them!"

"Oh, only just long enough for them to publish themselves as not
avoiding each other. All the same, you know," she said, "they do."

"Do avoid each other? How is your belief in that," I asked, "consistent
with your belief that they parade together in the park?"

"They ignore each other in public; they foregather in private."

"Ah, but they _don't_--since, as I tell you, she's even while we talk
the centre of the mystic circle of the twaddle of M. de Dreuil; chained
to a stake if you _can_ be. Besides," I wound up, "it's not only that
she's not the 'right fool'--it's simply that she's not a fool at all.
We want the woman who has been rendered most inane. But this lady hasn't
been rendered so in any degree. She's the reverse of inane. She's in
full possession."

"In full possession of what?"

"Why, of herself."

"Like Lady John?"

I had unfortunately to discriminate here. "No, not like Lady John."

"Like whom then?"

"Like anyone. Like me; like you; like Brissenden. Don't I satisfy you?"
I asked in