a reason; it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give
him so ironic an accent. One hadn't been noting "tones" all one's life
without recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position.
The dear man in the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably
IN one--which was no small point gained; what next accordingly
concerned us was the determination of THIS identity. One could only go
by probabilities, but there was the advantage that the most general of
the probabilities were virtual certainties. Possessed of our friend's
nationality, to start with, there was a general probability in his
narrower localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to keep
under the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets. He would
have issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England--at
the heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled
for me into the light. They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall
not reproduce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were
all there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking among
them. What the "position" would infallibly be, and why, on his hands,
it had turned "false"--these inductive steps could only be as rapid as
they were distinct. I accounted for everything--and "everything" had
by this time become the most promising quantity--by the view that he
had come to Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing,
as a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change
almost from hour to hour. He had come with a view that might have been
figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the
liquid, once poured into the open cup of APPLICATION, once exposed to
the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or
whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to
black, to yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps,
for all he could say to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he
would at first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise and alarm;
whereby the SITUATION clearly would spring from the play of wildness
and the development of extremes. I saw in a moment that, should this
development proceed both with force and logic, my "story" would leave
nothing to be desired. There is always, of course, for the
story-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable
advantage of his interest in the story AS SUCH