"It appears to have been at all events intended," my companion returned, "to have the effect of driving me to the wall; and the consequence of _that_ effect is nobody's fault but your own." She was all logic now, and I could easily see, between my light and my darkness, how she would remain so. Yet I was scarce satisfied. "And it's only on 'that effect'----?" "That I've made up my mind?" She was positively free at last to enjoy my discomfort. "Wouldn't it be surely, if your ideas were worth anything, enough? But it isn't," she added, "only on that. It's on something else." I had after an instant extracted from this the single meaning it could appear to yield. "I'm to understand that you _know_?" "That they're intimate enough for anything?" She faltered, but she brought it out. "I know." It was the oddest thing in the world for a little, the way this affected me without my at all believing it. It was preposterous, hang though it would with her somersault, and she had quite succeeded in giving it the note of sincerity. It was the mere sound of it that, as I felt even at the time, made it a little of a blow--a blow of the smart of which I was conscious just long enough inwardly to murmur: "What if she _should_ be right?" She had for these seconds the advantage of stirring within me the memory of her having indeed, the day previous, at Paddington, "known" as I hadn't. It had been really on what she _then_ knew that we originally started, and an element of our start had been that I admired her freedom. The form of it, at least--so beautifully had she recovered herself--was all there now. Well, I at any rate reflected, it wasn't the form that need trouble me, and I quickly enough put her a question that related only to the matter. "Of course if she is--it _is_ smash!" "And haven't you yet got used to its being?" I kept my eyes on her; I traced the buried figure in the ruins. "She's good enough for a fool; and so"--I made it out--"is he! If he _is_ the same ass--yes--they _might_ be." "_And_ he is," said Mrs. Briss, "the same ass!" I continued to look at her. "He would have no need then of her having transformed and inspired him." "Or of her having _de_formed and idiotised herself," my friend subjoined. Oh, how it sharpened my look! "No, no--she wouldn't need that." "The great point is that _he_ wouldn't!" Mrs. Briss laughed. I kept it up. "She would do perfectly." Mrs. Briss was not behind. "My dear man, she has _got_ to do!" This was brisker still, but I held my way. "Almost anyone would do." It seemed for a little, between humour and sadness, to strike her. "Almost anyone _would_. Still," she less pensively declared, "we want the right one." "Surely; the right one"--I could only echo it. "But how," I then proceeded, "has it happily been confirmed to you?" It pulled her up a trifle. "'Confirmed'----?" "That he's her lover."