THE SACRED FOUNT
"Never. She won't tell you."
"She has passed you her word? That won't alter the fact that she tells me everything."
He really said it in a way that made me take refuge for an instant in looking at my watch. "Are you going back to tea? If you are, I'll, in spite of my desire to roam, walk twenty steps with you." I had already again put my hand into his arm, and we strolled for a little till I threw off that I was sure Mrs. Server was waiting for him. To this he replied that if I wished to get rid of him he was as willing to take that as anything else for granted—an observation that I, on my side, answered with an inquiry, though an inquiry that had nothing to do with it. "Do you also tell everything to Mrs. Brissenden?"
It brought him up shorter than I had expected. "Do you ask me that in order that I shan't speak to her of this?"
I showed myself at a loss. "Of 'this'———?"
"Why, of what we've made out———"
"About Mrs. Server, you and I? You must act as to that, my dear fellow, quite on your own discretion. All the more that what on earth have we made out? I assure you I haven't a secret to confide to you about her, except that I've never seen a person more unquenchably radiant."
He almost jumped at it. "Well, that's just it!"
"But just what?"
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