"Surely. That's why I kindly arranged that, as she was to take, I happened to learn, the next train, Guy should come with her." "You arranged it?" I wondered. "She's not so clever as you then." "Because you feel that _she_ wouldn't, or couldn't? No doubt she wouldn't have made the same point of it--for more than one reason. Poor Guy hasn't pretensions--has nothing but his youth and his beauty. But that's precisely why I'm sorry for him and try whenever I can to give him a lift. Lady John's company _is_, you see, a lift." "You mean it has so unmistakably been one to Long?" "Yes--it has positively given him a mind and a tongue. _That's_ what has come over him." "Then," I said, "it's a most extraordinary case--such as one really has never met." "Oh, but," she objected, "it happens." "Ah, so very seldom! Yes--I've positively never met it. Are you very sure," I insisted, "that Lady John is the influence?" "I don't mean to say, of course," she replied, "that he looks fluttered if you mention her, that he doesn't in fact look as blank as a pickpocket. But that proves nothing--or rather, as they're known to be always together, and she from morning till night as pointed as a hat-pin, it proves just what one sees. One simply takes it in." I turned the picture round. "They're scarcely together when she's together with Brissenden." "Ah, that's only once in a way. It's a thing that from time to time such people--don't you know?--make a particular point of: they cultivate, to cover their game, the appearance of other little friendships. It puts outsiders off the scent, and the real thing meanwhile goes on. Besides, you yourself acknowledge the effect. If she hasn't made him clever, what has she made him? She has given him, steadily, more and more intellect." "Well, you may be right," I laughed, "though you speak as if it were cod-liver oil. Does she administer it, as a daily dose, by the spoonful? or only as a drop at a time? Does he take it in his food? Is he supposed to know? The difficulty for me is simply that if I've seen the handsome grow ugly and the ugly handsome, the fat grow thin and the thin fat, the short grow long and the long short; if I've even, likewise, seen the clever, as I've too fondly, at least, supposed them, grow stupid: so have I _not_ seen--no, not once in all my days--the stupid grow clever." It was a question, none the less, on which she could perfectly stand up. "All I can say is then that you'll have, the next day or two, an interesting new experience." "It _will_ be interesting," I declared while I thought--"and all the more if I make out for myself that Lady John _is_ the agent." "You'll make it out if you talk to her--that is, I mean, if you make _her_ talk. You'll see how she _can_." "She keeps her wit then," I asked, "in spite of all she pumps into others?" "Oh, she has enough for two!"