I had presently achieved another of my full revolutions, and I faced her again with a view of her overture and my answer to her last question. The terms were not altogether what my pity could have wished, but I sufficiently kept everything together to have to see that there were limits to my choice. "Yes, I let it go, your change of front, though it vexes me a little--and I'll in a moment tell you why--to have to. But let us put it that it's on a condition." "Change of front?" she murmured while she looked at me. "Your expressions are not of the happiest." But I saw it was only again to cover a doubt. My condition, for her, was questionable, and I felt it would be still more so on her hearing what it was. Meanwhile, however, in spite of her qualification of it, I had fallen back, once and for all, on pure benignity. "It scarce matters if I'm clumsy when you're practically so bland. I wonder if you'll understand," I continued, "if I make you an explanation." "Most probably," she answered, as handsome as ever, "not." "Let me at all events try you. It's moreover the one I just promised; which was no more indeed than the development of a feeling I've already permitted myself to show you. I lose"--I brought it out--"by your agreeing with me!" "'Lose'?" "Yes; because while we disagreed you were, in spite of that, on the right side." "And what do you call the right side?" "Well"--I brought it out again--"on the same side as my imagination." But it gave her at least a chance. "Oh, your imagination!" "Yes--I know what you think of it; you've sufficiently hinted how little that is. But it's precisely because you regard it as rubbish that I now appeal to you." She continued to guard herself by her surprises. "Appeal? I thought you were on the ground, rather," she beautifully smiled, "of dictation." "Well, I'm that too. I dictate my terms. But my terms are in themselves the appeal." I was ingenious but patient. "See?" "How in the world can I see?" "_Voyons_, then. Light or darkness, my imagination rides me. But of course if it's all wrong I want to get rid of it. You can't, naturally, help me to destroy the faculty itself, but you can aid in the defeat of its application to a particular case. It was because you so smiled, before, on that application, that I valued even my minor difference with you; and what I refer to as my loss is the fact that your frown leaves me struggling alone. The best thing for me, accordingly, as I feel, is to get rid altogether of the obsession. The way to do that, clearly, since _you've_ done it, is just to quench the fire. By the fire I mean the flame of the fancy that blazed so for us this morning. What the deuce have you, for yourself, poured on it? Tell me," I pleaded, "and teach me." Equally with her voice her face echoed me again. "Teach you?"