"'Lose'?"
"Yes; because while we disagreed you were, in spite of that, on the right side."
"And what do you call the right side?"
"Well"—I brought it out again—"on the same side as my imagination."
But it gave her at least a chance. "Oh, your imagination!"
"Yes—I know what you think of it; you've sufficiently hinted how little that is. But it's precisely because you regard it as rubbish that I now appeal to you."
She continued to guard herself by her surprises. "Appeal? I thought you were on the ground, rather," she beautifully smiled, "of dictation."
"Well, I'm that too. I dictate my terms. But my terms are in themselves the appeal." I was ingenious but patient. "See?"
"How in the world can I see?"
"Voyons, then. Light or darkness, my imagination rides me. But of course if it's all wrong I want to get rid of it. You can't, naturally, help me to destroy the faculty itself, but you can aid in the defeat of its application to a particular case. It was because you so smiled, before, on that application, that I valued even my minor difference with you; and what I refer to as my loss is the fact that your frown leaves me struggling alone. The best thing for me, accordingly, as I feel, is to get rid altogether of the obsession. The way to do that, clearly, since you've done it, is just to quench the fire. By the fire I mean the flame of the fancy that blazed so for us this morning. What the deuce have you, for yourself, poured on it? Tell me," I pleaded, "and teach me."