"To abandon my false gods. Lead me back to peace by the steps _you've_ trod. By so much as they must have remained traceable to you, shall I find them of interest and profit. They must in fact be most remarkable: won't they even--for what _I_ may find in them--be more remarkable than those we should now be taking together if we hadn't separated, if we hadn't pulled up?" That was a proposition I could present to her with candour, but before her absence of precipitation had permitted her much to consider it I had already followed it on. "You'll just tell me, however, that since I do pull up and turn back with you we shall just have _not_ separated. Well, then, so much the better--I see you're right. But I want," I earnestly declared, "not to lose an inch of the journey." She watched me now as a Roman lady at the circus may have watched an exemplary Christian. "The journey has been a very simple one," she said at last. "With my mind made up on a single point, it was taken at a stride." I was all interest. "On a single point?" Then, as, almost excessively deliberate, she still kept me: "You mean the still commonplace character of Long's--a--consciousness?" She had taken at last again the time she required. "Do you know what I think?" "It's exactly what I'm pressing you to make intelligible." "Well," said Mrs. Briss, "I think you're crazy." It naturally struck me. "Crazy?" "Crazy." I turned it over. "But do you call that intelligible?" She did it justice. "No: I don't suppose it _can_ be so for you if you _are_ insane." I risked the long laugh which might have seemed that of madness. "'If I am' is lovely!" And whether or not it was the special sound, in my ear, of my hilarity, I remember just wondering if perhaps I mightn't be. "Dear woman, it's the point at issue!" But it was as if she too had been affected. "It's not at issue for me now." I gave her then the benefit of my stirred speculation. "It always happens, of course, that one is one's self the last to know. You're perfectly convinced?" She not ungracefully, for an instant, faltered; but since I really would have it----! "Oh, so far as what we've talked of is concerned, perfectly!" "And it's actually what you've come down then to tell me?" "Just exactly what. And if it's a surprise to you," she added, "that I _should_ have come down--why, I can only say I was prepared for anything." "Anything?" I smiled. "In the way of a surprise." I thought; but her preparation was natural, though in a moment I could match it. "Do you know that's what I was too?" "Prepared----?" "For anything in the way of a surprise. But only _from_ you," I explained. "And of course--yes," I mused, "I've got it. If I _am_ crazy," I went on--"it's indeed simple." She appeared, however, to feel, from the influence of my present tone, the impulse, in courtesy, to attenuate. "Oh, I don't pretend it's simple!" "No? I thought that was just what you did pretend."