"Why then isn't it in her own interest, for the sake of the screen, just to _do_ that? The appearance of someone in particular would be exactly the opposite of the appearance of Long. Your own admission is that that's _his_ line with Lady John." Mrs. Brissenden took her view. "Oh, she doesn't want to do anything so like the real thing. And, as for what he does, they don't feel in the same way. He's not nervous." "Then why does he go in for a screen?" "I mean"--she readily modified it--"that he's not so nervous as May. He hasn't the same reasons for panic. A man never has. Besides, there's not so much in Mr. Long to show----" "What, by my notion, has taken place? Why not, if it was precisely by the change in him that my notion was inspired? Any change in _her_ I know comparatively little about." We hovered so near the case of Mr. and Mrs. Brissenden that it positively excited me, and all the more for her sustained unconsciousness. "Oh, the man's not aware of his own change. He doesn't see it as we do. It's all to his advantage." "But _we_ see it to his advantage. How should that prevent?" "We see it to the advantage of his mind and his talk, but not to that of----" "Well, what?" I pressed as she pulled up. She was thinking how to name such mysteries. "His delicacy. His consideration. His thought _for_ her. He would think for her if he weren't selfish. But he _is_ selfish--too much so to spare her, to be generous, to realise. It's only, after all," she sagely went on, feeding me again, as I winced to feel, with profundity of my own sort, "it's only an excessive case, a case that in him happens to show as what the doctors call 'fine,' of what goes on whenever two persons are so much mixed up. One of them always gets more out of it than the other. One of them--you know the saying--gives the lips, the other gives the cheek." "It's the deepest of all truths. Yet the cheek profits too," I more prudently argued. "It profits most. It takes and keeps and uses all the lips give. The cheek, accordingly," she continued to point out, "is Mr. Long's. The lips are what we began by looking for. We've found them. They're drained--they're dry, the lips. Mr. Long finds his improvement natural and beautiful. He revels in it. He takes it for granted. He's sublime." It kept me for a minute staring at her. "So--do you know?--are _you_!" She received this wholly as a tribute to her acuteness, and was therefore proportionately gracious. "That's only because it's catching. You've _made_ me sublime. You found me dense. You've affected me quite as Mrs. Server has affected Mr. Long. I don't pretend I show it," she added, "quite as much as he does."