I took indeed too many precautions for my friend not to have to look at them. "Extravagant?" The irritation of the word had grown for her, yet I risked repeating it, and with the effect of its giving her another pause. "I tell you she isn't, that!"
"Exactly; and it's only to ask you what in the world then she is."
"She's horrid!" said Mrs. Briss.
"'Horrid'?" I gloomily echoed.
"Horrid. It wasn't," she then developed with decision, "a 'dash,' as you say, 'of the same sort'—though goodness knows of what sort you mean; it wasn't, to be plain, a 'dash' at all." My companion was plain. "She settled. She stuck." And finally, as I could but echo her again: "She made love to him."
"But—a—really?"
"Really. That's how I knew."
I was at sea. "'Knew'? But you saw."
"I knew—that is I learnt—more than I saw. I knew she couldn't be gone."
It in fact brought light. "Knew it by him?"