"For the theory with which we started? Why, our recognised fact. The change in the man. You may say," I pursued, "that I was the first to speak for him; but being the first didn't, in your view, constitute a weakness when it came to your speaking yourself for Mrs. Server. By which I mean," I added, "speaking against her." She remembered, but not for my benefit. "Well, you then asked me _my_ warrant. And as regards Mr. Long and your speaking against _him_----" "Do you describe what I say as 'against' him?" I immediately broke in. It took her but an instant. "Surely--to have made him out horrid." I could only want to fix it. "'Horrid'----?" "Why, having such secrets." She was roundly ready now. "Sacrificing poor May." "But _you_, dear lady, sacrificed poor May! It didn't strike you as horrid _then_." "Well, that was only," she maintained, "because you talked me over." I let her see the full process of my taking--or not taking--this in. "And who is it then that--if, as you say, you've spoken to no one--has, as I may call it, talked you under?" She completed, on the spot, her statement of a moment before. "Not a creature has spoken to me." I felt somehow the wish to make her say it in as many ways as possible--I seemed so to enjoy her saying it. This helped me to make my tone approve and encourage. "You've communicated so little with anyone!" I didn't even make it a question. It was scarce yet, however, quite good enough. "So little? I've not communicated the least mite." "Precisely. But don't think me impertinent for having for a moment wondered. What I should say to you if you had, you know, would be that you just accused me." "Accused you?" "Of talking too much." It came back to her dim. "Are we accusing each other?" Her tone seemed suddenly to put us nearer together than we had ever been at all. "Dear no," I laughed--"not each other; only with each other's help, a few of our good friends." "A few?" She handsomely demurred. "But one or two at the best." "Or at the worst!"--I continued to laugh. "And not even those, it after all appears, very much!" She didn't like my laughter, but she was now grandly indulgent. "Well, I accuse no one." I was silent a little; then I concurred. "It's doubtless your best line; and I really quite feel, at all events, that when you mentioned a while since that I talk too much you only meant too much to _you_." "Yes--I wasn't imputing to you the same direct appeal. I didn't suppose," she explained, "that--to match your own supposition of _me_--you had resorted to May herself." "You didn't suppose I had asked her?" The point was positively that she didn't; yet it made us look at each other almost as hard as if she did. "No, of course you couldn't have supposed anything so cruel--all the more that, as you knew, I had not admitted the possibility."