"No, I cannot understand it at all," replied Roseleaf. "And if you, with your superior quickness of perception, have found nothing, I don't see how you could expect me to."
"You have greater opportunities," said Weil, with a smile that was not quite natural. "You have the ear of the fair Miss Daisy, remember," he explained, in reply to the inquiring look that was raised to him.
"Ah, but she knows nothing, either," exclaimed Roseleaf. "I am sure of that."
Mr. Weil was silent for some moments.
"Well, if you cannot find the true cause," he said, "you will have to invent a hypothetical one. Your novel cannot stand still forever. Imagine something—a crime, for instance, of which this black fellow is cognizant. A murder—that he peeped in at a keyhole and saw. How would that do?"
Roseleaf turned pale.
"You know," he said, "that you are talking of impossibilities."
"On the contrary, nothing is impossible," responded the other, impatiently. "College professors, delicate ladies, children not yet in their teens, have committed homicide, why not this handsome gentleman in the wool business? Or if you won't have murder—and I agree that blood is rather tiresome, it has been overdone so much—bring a woman into the case. Let us have a betrayal, a wronged virgin, and that sort of thing."
The color did not return to the young man's cheek.
"Which is still more incredible in the present case," he said. "Do you think Wilton Fern could do evil to a woman? Look in his face once and dismiss that libel within the second."