She winced a little at this renewed evocation of his retreat, but she took it as she had not done before, and I felt that with another push she would be fairly afloat. "He had reason to walk!"
I wondered. "What had you said to him?"
She pieced it out. "Nothing—or very little. But I had listened."
"And to what?"
"To what he says. To his platitudes."
"His platitudes?" I stared. "Long's?"
"Why, don't you know he's a prize fool?"
I mused, sceptical but reasonable. "He was."
"He is!"
Mrs. Briss was superb, but, as I quickly felt I might remind her, there was her possibly weak judgment. "Your confidence is splendid; only mustn't I remember that your sense of the finer kinds of cleverness isn't perhaps absolutely secure? Don't you know?—you also, till just now, thought me a prize fool."