Brissenden appeared to wonder where I was coming out, yet not as if he feared it. There was even a particular place, if I could but guess it, where he would have liked me to come. "Oh, she's extremely charming. But of course she's strikingly odd."
"Odd?—really?"
"Why, in the sense, I mean, that I thought you suggested you've noticed."
"That of extravagant vivacity? Oh, I've had to notice it at a distance, without knowing what it represents."
He just hesitated. "You haven't any idea at all what it represents?"
"How should I have," I smiled, "when she never comes near me? I've thought that, as I tell you, marked. What does her avoidance of me represent? Has she happened, with you, to throw any light on it?"
"I think," said Brissenden after another moment, "that she's rather afraid of you."
I could only be surprised. "The most harmless man in the house?"
"Are you really?" he asked—and there was a touch of the comic in hearing him put it with his inveterate gravity.
"If you take me for anything else," I replied, "I doubt if you'll find anyone to back you."