THE SACRED FOUNT
and it's as so taking it that I renounce. I keep nothing at all. Now do you believe I'm honest?"
She hesitated. "Well—yes, if you say so."
"Ah," I sighed, "I see you don't! What can I do," I asked, "to prove it?"
"You can easily prove it. You can let me go."
"Does it strike you," I considered, "that I should take your going as a sign of your belief?"
"Of what else, then?"
"Why, surely," I promptly replied, "my assent to your leaving our discussion where it stands would constitute a very different symptom. Wouldn't it much rather represent," I inquired, "a failure of belief on my own part in your honesty? If you can judge me, in short, as only pretending———"
"Why shouldn't you," she put in for me, "also judge me? What have I to gain by pretending?"
"I'll tell you," I returned, laughing, "if you'll tell me what I have."
She appeared to ask herself if she could, and then to decide in the negative. "If I don't understand you in any way, of course I don't in that. Put it, at any rate," she now rather wearily quavered, "that one of us has as little to gain as the other. I believe you," she repeated. "There!"
"Thanks," I smiled, "for the way you say it. If you don't, as you say, understand me," I insisted, "it's because you think me crazy. And if you think me crazy I don't see how you can leave me."
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