"Oh, it's not you in the least," Mrs. Server blandly took upon herself to observe. "This face is so bad----" "And mine is so good?" our companion laughed. "Thank you for saving me!" I watched them look at each other, for there had been as yet between them no complete exchange. Yes, they were natural. I couldn't have made it out that they were not. But there was something, all the same, that I wanted to know, and I put it immediately to Long. "Why do you bring against me such an accusation?" He met the question--singularly enough--as if his readiness had suddenly deserted him. "I don't know!"--and he turned off to another picture. It left the three of us all the more confronted with the conundrum launched by Obert, and Mrs. Server's curiosity remained. "_Do_ name," she said to me, "the flattered individual." "No, it's a responsibility I leave to Obert." But he was clearly still at fault; he was like a man desiring, but unable, to sneeze. "I see the fellow--yet I don't. Never mind." He turned away too. "He'll come to me." "The resemblance," said Long, on this, at a distance from us and not turning, "the resemblance, which I shouldn't think would puzzle anyone, is simply to 'poor Briss'!" "Oh, of course!"--and Obert gave a jump round. "Ah--I do see it," Mrs. Server conceded with her head on one side, but as if speaking rather for harmony. I didn't believe she saw it, but that only made her the more natural; which was also the air she had on going to join Long, in his new contemplation, after I had admitted that it was of Brissenden I myself had thought. Obert and I remained together in the presence of the Man with the Mask, and, the others being out of earshot, he reminded me that I had promised him the night before in the smoking-room to give him to-day the knowledge I had then withheld. If I had announced that I was on the track of a discovery, pray had I made it yet, and what was it, at any rate, that I proposed to discover? I felt now, in truth, more uncomfortable than I had expected in being kept to my obligation, and I beat about the bush a little till, instead of meeting it, I was able to put the natural question: "What wonderful things was Long just saying to you?" "Oh, characteristic ones enough--whimsical, fanciful, funny. The things he says, you know." It was indeed a fresh view. "They strike you as characteristic?" "Of the man himself and his type of mind? Surely. Don't _you_? He talks to talk, but he's really amusing." I was watching our companions. "Indeed he is--extraordinarily amusing." It was highly interesting to me to hear at last of Long's "type of mind." "See how amusing he is at the present moment to Mrs. Server."