The Sacred Fount

It naturally struck me. "Crazy?"

"Crazy."

I turned it over. "But do you call that intelligible?"

She did it justice. "No: I don't suppose it can be so for you if you are insane."

I risked the long laugh which might have seemed that of madness. "'If I am' is lovely!" And whether or not it was the special sound, in my ear, of my hilarity, I remember just wondering if perhaps I mightn't be. "Dear woman, it's the point at issue!"

But it was as if she too had been affected. "It's not at issue for me now."

I gave her then the benefit of my stirred speculation. "It always happens, of course, that one is one's self the last to know. You're perfectly convinced?"

She not ungracefully, for an instant, faltered; but since I really would have it–! "Oh, so far as what we've talked of is concerned, perfectly!"

"And it's actually what you've come down then to tell me?"

"Just exactly what. And if it's a surprise to you," she added, "that I should have come down—why, I can only say I was prepared for anything."

"Anything?" I smiled.

"In the way of a surprise."

I thought; but her preparation was natural, though in a moment I could match it. "Do you know that's what I was too?"

"Prepared–?"

"For anything in the way of a surprise. But only from you," I explained. "And of course—yes," I mused, "I've got it. If I am crazy," I went on—"it's indeed simple."

She appeared, however, to feel, from the influence of my present tone, the impulse, in courtesy, to attenuate. "Oh, I don't pretend it's simple!"

"No? I thought that was just what you did pretend."

"I didn't suppose," said Mrs. Briss, "that you'd like it. I didn't suppose that you'd accept it or even listen to it. But I owed it to you–" She hesitated.

"You owed it to me to let me know what you thought of me even should it prove very disagreeable?"

That perhaps was more than she could adopt. "I owed it to myself," she replied with a touch of austerity.

"To let me know I'm demented?"

"To let you know I'm not." We each looked, I think, when she had said it, as if she had done what she said. "That's all."

"All?" I wailed. "Ah, don't speak as if it were so little. It's much. It's everything."

"It's anything you will!" said Mrs. Briss impatiently. "Good-night."

"Good-night?" I was aghast. "You leave me on it?"

She appeared to profess for an instant all the freshness of her own that she was pledged to guard. "I must leave you on something. I couldn't come to spend a whole hour."

"But do you think it's so quickly done—to persuade a man he's crazy?"

"I haven't expected to persuade you."

"Only to throw out the hint?"

"Well," she admitted, "it would be good if it could work in you. But I've told you," she added as if to wind up and have done, "what determined me."

"I beg your pardon"—oh, I protested! "That's just what you've not told me. The reason of your change–"

"I'm not speaking," she broke in, "of my change."

"Ah, but I am!" I declared with a sharpness that threw her back for a minute on her reserves. "It's your change," I again insisted, "that's the interesting thing. If I'm crazy, I must once more remind you, you were simply crazy with me; and how can I therefore be indifferent to your recovery of your wit or let you go without having won from you the secret of your remedy?" I shook my head with kindness, but with decision. "You mustn't leave me till you've placed it in my hand."

The reserves I had spoken of were not, however, to fail her. "I thought you just said that you let my inconsistency go."

"Your moral responsibility for it—perfectly. But how can I show a greater indulgence than by positively desiring to enter into its history? It's in that sense that, as I say," I developed, "I do speak of your change. There must have been a given moment when the need of it—or when, in other words, the truth of my personal state—dawned upon you. That moment is the key to your whole position—the moment for us to fix."

"Fix it," said poor Mrs. Briss, "when you like!"

"I had much rather," I protested, "fix it when you like. I want—you surely must understand if I want anything of it at all—to get it absolutely right." Then as this plea seemed still not to move her, I once more compressed my palms. "You won't help me?"

She bridled at last with a higher toss. "It wasn't with such views I came. I don't believe," she went on a shade more patiently, "I don't believe—if you want to know the reason—that you're really sincere."

Here indeed was an affair. "Not sincere—I?"

"Not properly honest. I mean in giving up."

"Giving up what?"

"Why, everything."

"Everything? Is it a question"—I stared—"of that?"

"You would if you were honest."

"Everything?" I repeated.

Again she stood to it. "Everything."

"But is that quite the readiness I've professed?"

"If it isn't then, what is?"

I thought a little. "Why, isn't it simply a matter rather of the renunciation of a confidence?"

"In your sense and your truth?" This, she indicated, was all she asked. "Well, what is that but everything?"