I paused for a reply, but it was not to come so happily as from Obert. "You talk too much!" said Mrs. Briss. I met it with amazement. "Why, whom have I told?" I looked at her so hard with it that her colour began to rise, which made me promptly feel that she wouldn't press that point. "I mean you're carried away--you're abused by a fine fancy: so that, with your art of putting things, one doesn't know where one is--nor, if you'll allow me to say so, do I quite think _you_ always do. Of course I don't deny you're awfully clever. But you build up," she brought out with a regret so indulgent and a reluctance so marked that she for some seconds fairly held the blow--"you build up houses of cards." I had been impatient to learn what, and, frankly, I was disappointed. This broke from me, after an instant, doubtless, with a bitterness not to be mistaken. "Long _isn't_ what he seems?" "Seems to whom?" she asked sturdily. "Well, call it--for simplicity--to _me_. For you see"--and I spoke as to show _what_ it was to see--"it all stands or falls by that." The explanation presently appeared a little to have softened her. If it all stood or fell only by _that_, it stood or fell by something that, for her comfort, might be not so unsuccessfully disposed of. She exhaled, with the swell of her fine person, a comparative blandness--seemed to play with the idea of a smile. She had, in short, her own explanation. "The trouble with you is that you over-estimate the penetration of others. How can it approach your own?" "Well, yours had for a while, I should say, distinct moments of keeping up with it. Nothing is more possible," I went on, "than that I do talk too much; but I've done so--about the question in dispute between us--only to _you_. I haven't, as I conceived we were absolutely not to do, mentioned it to anyone else, nor given anyone a glimpse of our difference. If you've not understood yourself as pledged to the same reserve, and have consequently," I went on, "appealed to the light of other wisdom, it shows at least that, in spite of my intellectual pace, you must more or less have followed me. What am I _not_, in fine, to think of your intelligence," I asked, "if, deciding for a resort to headquarters, you've put the question to Long himself?" "The question?" She was straight out to sea again. "Of the identity of the lady." She slowly, at this, headed about. "To Long himself?" XIII