THE SACRED FOUNT
was really more than I could as yet provide an explanation for, but I was pressed; Brissenden would have reached his wife's room again, and I temporised. "It was her cleverness that held you so that when I passed you couldn't look at me?"
He looked at me at present well enough. "I knew you were passing, but I wanted precisely to mark for you the difference. If you really want to know," the poor man confessed, "I was a little ashamed of myself. I had given her away to you, you know, rather, before."
"And you were bound you wouldn't do it again?"
He smiled in his now complete candour. "Ah, there was no reason." Then he used, happily, to right himself, my own expression. "She was all there."
"I see—I see." Yet I really didn't see enough not to have for an instant to turn away.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To do what Brissenden came to me for."
"But I don't know, you see, what Brissenden came to you for."
"Well, with a message. She was to have seen me this evening, but, as she gave me no chance, I was afraid I had lost it and that, so rather awkwardly late, she didn't venture. But what he arrived for just now, at her request, was to say she does venture."
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