Chance

"Do you think so, Mrs. Fyne?" I said sagaciously. "Of course you are in

a position . . . " I was continuing with caution when she struck out

vivaciously for immediate assent.

"Obviously! Clearly! You yourself must admit . . . "

"But, Mrs. Fyne," I remonstrated, "you forget that I don't know your

brother."

This argument which was not only sagacious but true, overwhelmingly true,

unanswerably true, seemed to surprise her.

I wondered why. I did not know enough of her brother for the remotest

guess at what he might be like. I had never set eyes on the man. I

didn't know him so completely that by contrast I seemed to have known

Miss de Barral--whom I had seen twice (altogether about sixty minutes)

and with whom I had exchanged about sixty words--from the cradle so to

speak. And perhaps, I thought, looking down at Mrs. Fyne (I had remained

standing) perhaps she thinks that this ought to be enough for a sagacious

assent.

She kept silent; and I looking at her with polite expectation, went on

addressing her mentally in a mood of familiar approval which would have

astonished her had it been audible: You my dear at any rate are a sincere

woman . . . "

"I call a woman sincere," Marlow began again after giving me a cigar and

lighting one himself, "I call a woman sincere when she volunteers a

statement resembling remotely in form what she really would like to say,

what she really thinks ought to be said if it were not for the necessity

to spare the stupid sensitiveness of men. The women's rougher, simpler,

more upright judgment, embraces the whole truth, which their tact, their

mistrust of masculine idealism, ever prevents them from speaking in its

entirety. And their tact is unerring. We could not stand women speaking

the truth. We could not bear it. It would cause infinite misery and

bring about most awful disturbances in this rather mediocre, but still

idealistic fool's paradise in which each of us lives his own little

life--the unit in the great sum of existence. And they know it. They

are merciful. This generalization does not apply exactly to Mrs. Fyne's

outburst of sincerity in a matter in which neither my affections nor my

vanity were engaged. That's why, may be, she ventured so far. For a

woman she chose to be as open as the day with me. There was not only the

form but almost the whole substance of her thought in what she said. She

believed she could risk it. She had reasoned somewhat in this way;

there's a man, possessing a certain amount of sagacity . . . "