THE SACRED FOUNT
But she was impatient of this. "Oh, one doesn't know what comes—or what doesn't—to Long himself! I'm not sure he's too modest to misrepresent—if he had the intelligence to play a part."
"Which he hasn't!" I concluded.
"Which he hasn't. It's to me they might have spoken—or to each other."
"But I thought you exactly held they had chattered in accounting for his state by the influence of Lady John."
She got the matter instantly straight. "Not a bit. That chatter was mine only—and produced to meet yours. There had so, by your theory, to be a woman———"
"That, to oblige me, you invented her? Precisely. But I thought———"
"You needn't have thought!" Mrs. Briss broke in. "I didn't invent her."
"Then what are you talking about?"
"I didn't invent her," she repeated, looking at me hard. "She's true." I echoed it in vagueness, though instinctively again in protest; yet I held my breath, for this was really the point at which I felt my companion's forces most to have mustered. Her manner now moreover gave me a great idea of them, and her whole air was of taking immediate advantage of my impression. "Well, see here: since you've wanted it, I'm afraid that, however little you may like it, you'll have to take it. You've
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