"And you, Gertrude! It's a compliment you should easily forgive." She preferred to ignore it. "Miss Blake," she announced, "has just been with me for an hour." She waited the effect of this. The effect was considerable, plunging me into dark amazement and conjecture. Not daring to make the tiniest guess as to the result of so fantastic an interview, I was left not merely tongue-tied but brain-tied. Gertrude saw at once that she had beggared me and could now at her leisure dole out the equal humiliation of alms withheld or bestowed. "Given your curious social astigmatism and her curious mixed charm--so subtle and so deeply uncivilized--I can see, of course, why she has bewitched you," said Gertrude reflectively, and paused. "And I can see," she continued, musing, as if she had adopted the stage convention of soliloquy, "why you have just failed to capture her imagination. For you have failed--but you can hardly be aware how completely." "Whether or not I'm aware," I snapped, "seems negligible! Susan feels she must leave me, and she'll probably act with her usual promptness. Is that what she called to tell you?" "Partly," acknowledged Gertrude, resuming then her soliloquy: "You've given her--as you would--a ridiculous education. She seems to have instincts, impulses, which--all things considered--might have bloomed if cultivated. As it is, you found her crude, and, in spite of all the culture you've crammed upon her, you've left her so. She's emancipated--that is, public; she's thrown away the locks and keys of her mind. I grant she has one. But apparently no one has even suggested to her that the essence of being rare, of being fine, is knowing what to omit, what to reject, what to conceal. I find my own people, Ambrose--and they're the _right_ people, the only ones worth finding--by feeling secure with them; I can trust them not to go too far. They have decorum, taste. Oh, I admit we're upholding a lost cause! You're a deserter from it--and Miss Blake doesn't even suspect its existence. Still"--with a private smile--"her crudity had certain immediate advantages this morning." Ignoring rarity, fineness, I sank to the indecorum of a frankly human grin. "In other words, Gertrude, Susan omitted so little, went so much too far, that she actually forced you for once to get down to brass tacks!" Gertrude frowned. "She stripped herself naked before a stranger--if that's what you mean." "With the result, Gertrude?" "Ah, that's why I'm here--as a duty I owe myself. I'm bound to say my suspicions were unjust--to Miss Blake, at least. I'll even go beyond that----" "Careful, Gertrude! Evil communications corrupt good manners."