“Isn’t it all melodramatic?” she laughed.
“Horribly,” agreed John.
“It’s an extraordinary conglomeration,” she pursued. “Setting, old-world; drama, early Victorian; period, twentieth century. Do you suppose that any one who didn’t know about it, would believe it?”
“Not an atom,” John assured her promptly. “If any one, I for instance, were to write a novel dealing with it, I’ll be bound I’d be considered to have strained the long arm of coincidence to breaking point. That’s the queer thing about truth. It’s always a thousand times, a million times, queerer than fiction.”
“It’s from precisely that—the very queerness of it,—that I can derive some small modicum of consolation,” she assured him gravely. “I feel, on occasions, that I am not myself at all, but merely a heroine in a book. Only, if I were, I might be tolerably certain of a happy-ever-after ending. I might say indisputably certain, considering the style of the plot. Here it is nothing but a toss-up.”
“Oh, no.” John shook his head. “I wouldn’t give mere chance quite such a free hand.”
“You mean that there’s a real plan behind it all?” she demanded point blank.
“Oh, well!” said John. There was a slightly quizzical smile in his eyes.
“Of course I know there is truly,” responded she, smiling in her turn. “But——”
“But me no buts,” retorted John. “Chance isn’t a free agent, and you know it; though I’ll allow he has an extraordinary appearance of acting on his own account now and again. But that’s merely his guise. If he didn’t appear clad in that fashion, we’d misname him; and I’ve an idea he’s curiously tenacious of his personality. People, you know,” continued John slyly, “are apt to believe in his omnipotence.”