THE SACRED FOUNT
ing worse than of having thought it over. But you see what thinking it over does for it."
The way I said this appeared to amuse him. "I see what it does for you!"
"No, you don't! Not at all yet. That's just the embarrassment."
"Just whose?" If I had thanked him for his patience he showed that he deserved it. "Just yours?"
"Well, say mine. But when you do———!" And I paused as for the rich promise of it.
"When I do see where you are, you mean?"
"The only difficulty is whether you can see. But we must try. You've set me whirling round, but we must go step by step. Oh, but it's all in your germ!"—I kept that up. "If she isn't now beastly unhappy———"
"She's beastly happy?" he broke in, getting firmer hold, if not of the real impression he had just been gathering under my eyes, then at least of something he had begun to make out that my argument required. "Well, that is the way I see her difference. Her difference, I mean," he added, in his evident wish to work with me, "her difference from her other difference! There!" He laughed as if, also, he had found himself fairly fantastic. "Isn't that clear for you?"
"Crystalline—for me. But that's because I know why."
217
