"No," he said. "Let sleeping clocks lie." And he saw that Mimi read the meanness of his soul and was silently greeting him as a fellow-sinner. She surprised him by saying: "I assure you, Mr. Prohack, that my sole idea--that our sole idea--was to make the house more possible for you." And as she uttered these words she gazed at him with a sort of delicious pouting, challenging reproach. What a singular remark, he thought! It implied a comprehension of the fact, which he had considerately never disclosed, that he objected to the house _in toto_ and would have been happier in his former abode. And, curiously, it implied further that she comprehended and sympathised with his objections. She knew she had not done everything necessary to reconcile him to the noble mansion, but she had done what she could--and it was not negligible. "Nothing of the kind," said he. "You simply had no 'sole idea.' When I admitted just now that your motives were good I was exaggerating. Your motives were only half good, and if you think otherwise you are deceiving yourself; you are not being realistic. In that respect you are no better than anybody else." "What was my other motive, then?" she enquired submissively, as if appealing for information to the greatest living authority on the enigmas of her own heart. "Your other motive was to satisfy your damnable instinct for dubious and picturesque adventure," said Mr. Prohack. "You were pandering to the evil in you. If you could have stopped the clock from striking by walking down Bond Street in Mrs. Slipstone's clothes and especially her boots, would you have done it? Certainly not. Of course you wouldn't. Don't try to come the self-sacrificing saint over me, because you can't do it." These words, even if amounting to a just estimate of the situation, were ruthless and terrible. They might have accomplished some genuine and lasting good if Mr. Prohack had spoken them in a tone corresponding to their import. But he did not. His damnable instinct for pleasing people once more got the better of him, and he spoke them in a benevolent and paternal tone, his voice vibrating with compassion and with appreciation of her damnable instinct for dubious and picturesque adventure. The tone destroyed the significance of the words. Moreover, not content with the falsifying tone, he rose up from his chair as he spoke, approached the charming and naughty girl, and patted her on the shoulder. The rebuke, indeed, ended by being more agreeable to the sinner than praise might have been from a man less corroded with duplicity than Mr. Prohack. Mimi surprised him a second time. "You're perfectly right," she said. "You always are." And she seized his limp hand in hers and kissed it,--and ran away, leaving him looking at the kissed hand.