"Prepared——?"
"For anything in the way of a surprise. But only from you," I explained. "And of course—yes," I mused, "I've got it. If I am crazy," I went on—"it's indeed simple."
She appeared, however, to feel, from the influence of my present tone, the impulse, in courtesy, to attenuate. "Oh, I don't pretend it's simple!"
"No? I thought that was just what you did pretend."
"I didn't suppose," said Mrs. Briss, "that you'd like it. I didn't suppose that you'd accept it or even listen to it. But I owed it to you——" She hesitated.
"You owed it to me to let me know what you thought of me even should it prove very disagreeable?"
That perhaps was more than she could adopt. "I owed it to myself," she replied with a touch of austerity.
"To let me know I'm demented?"
"To let you know I'm not." We each looked, I think, when she had said it, as if she had done what she said. "That's all."
"All?" I wailed. "Ah, don't speak as if it were so little. It's much. It's everything."