At the end of it, one day, the London paper had another piece of news: "Mr. and Mrs. Owen Gereth, who arrived in town last week, proceed this morning to Paris." They exchanged no word about it till the evening, and none indeed would then have been uttered had not Mrs. Gereth irrelevantly broken out: "I dare say you wonder why I declared the other day with such assurance that he wouldn't live with her. He apparently is living with her."
"Surely it's the only proper thing for him to do."
"They're beyond me—I give it up," said Mrs. Gereth.
"I don't give it up—I never did," Fleda returned.
"Then what do you make of his aversion to her?"
"Oh, she has dispelled it."
Mrs. Gereth said nothing for a minute. "You're prodigious in your choice of terms!" she then simply ejaculated.
But Fleda went luminously on; she once more enjoyed her great command of her subject: "I think that when you came to see me at Maggie's you saw too many things, you had too many ideas."
"You had none," said Mrs. Gereth: "you were completely bewildered."
"Yes, I didn't quite understand—but I think I understand now. The case is simple and logical enough. She's a person who's upset by failure and who blooms and expands with success. There was something she had set her heart upon, set her teeth about—the house exactly as she had seen it."