believe,
would be incapable of telling an untruth. But I've never met one of whom
I could be sure that she would tell me the whole truth. Don't you see
this case in point," she pursued, with a little laugh, "I could not drag
it out of you that you disliked the Simplon idea, so long as there was
a chance of our going. Immediately we find that we can't go, you admit
that you hated it."

"But you wanted to go," objected Lady Cressage, quietly. "That was the
important thing. What I wanted or did not want had nothing to do with
the matter."

Celia's face clouded momentarily. "Those are not the kind of things I
like to hear you say," she exclaimed, with a certain vigour. "They put
everything in quite a false light. I am every whit as anxious that you
should be pleased as that I should. You know that well enough. I've said
it a thousand times--and have I ever done anything to disprove it? But
I never can find out what you do want--what really will please you! You
never will propose anything; you never will be entirely frank about the
things I propose. It's only by watching you out of the corner of my eye
that I can ever guess whether anything is altogether to your liking or
not."

The discussion seemed to be following lines familiar to them both. "That
is only another way of saying what you discovered long ago," said
Lady Cressage, passively--"that I am deficient in the enthusiasms. But
originally you were of the opinion that you had enthusiasms enough for
two, and that my lack of them would redress the balance, so to speak.
I thought it was a very logical opinion then, and, from my own point of
view, I think so now. But if it does not work in practice, at least the
responsibility of defending it is not mine."

"Delightful!" cried Celia, smiling gayly as she put down her cup again.
"You are the only woman I've ever known who was worth arguing with.
The mere operation makes me feel as if I were going through Oxford--or
passing the final Jesuit examinations. Heaven knows, I would get up
arguments with you every day, for the pure enjoyment of the thing--if
I weren't eternally afraid of saying something that would hurt your
feelings, and then you wouldn't tell me, but would nurse the wound in
silence in the dark, and I should know that something was wrong, and
have to watch you for weeks to make out what it was--and it would all
be too unhappy. But it comes back, you see, to what I said before. You
don't tell me things!"

E