We had faced each other fairly, with eyes that didn’t flinch; but his had a dim, strange light, and my certitude triumphed in his perceptible paleness. “Do you really pretend,” I asked, “not to know what they are?” “My dear child,” he replied, “you describe them too sketchily!” I considered a moment. “One may well be embarrassed to finish the picture! But from that point of view--and from the beginning--what was ever more embarrassing than your idiosyncrasy?” He was extremely vague. “My idiosyncrasy?” “Your notorious, your peculiar power.” He gave a great shrug of impatience, a groan of overdone disdain. “Oh, my peculiar power!” “Your accessibility to forms of life,” I coldly went on, “your command of impressions, appearances, contacts closed--for our gain or our loss--to the rest of us. That was originally a part of the deep interest with which you inspired me--one of the reasons I was amused, I was indeed positively proud to know you. It was a magnificent distinction; it’s a magnificent distinction still. But of course I had no prevision then of the way it would operate now; and even had that been the case I should have had none of the extraordinary way in which its action would affect me.” “To what in the name of goodness,” he pleadingly inquired, “are you fantastically alluding?” Then as I remained silent, gathering a tone for my charge, “How in the world _does_ it operate?” he went on; “and how in the world are you affected?” “She missed you for five years,” I said, “but she never misses you now. You’re making it up!” “Making it up?” He had begun to turn from white to red. “You see her--you see her: you see her every night!” He gave a loud sound of derision, but it was not a genuine one. “She comes to you as she came that evening,” I declared; “having tried it she found she liked it!” I was able, with God’s help, to speak without blind passion or vulgar violence; but those were the exact words--and far from “sketchy” they then appeared to me--that I uttered. He had turned away in his laughter, clapping his hands at my folly, but in an instant he faced me again, with a change of expression that struck me. “Do you dare to deny,” I asked, “that you habitually see her?” He had taken the line of indulgence, of meeting me halfway and kindly humouring me. At all events, to my astonishment, he suddenly said: “Well, my dear, what if I do?” “It’s your natural right; it belongs to your constitution and to your wonderful, if not perhaps quite enviable fortune. But you will easily understand that it separates us. I unconditionally release you.” “Release me?” “You must choose between me and her.” He looked at me hard. “I see.” Then he walked away a little, as if grasping what I had said and thinking how he had best treat it. At last he turned upon me afresh. “How on earth do you know such an awfully private thing?”