I told him about Corvick's cleverness, his admiration, the
intensity of his interest in my anecdote; and without making too
much of the divergence of our respective estimates mentioned that
my friend was already of opinion that he saw much further into a
certain affair than most people. He was quite as fired as I had
been at Bridges. He was moreover in love with the young lady:
perhaps the two together would puzzle something out.

Vereker seemed struck with this. "Do you mean they're to be
married?"

"I dare say that's what it will come to."

"That may help them," he conceded, "but we must give them time!"

I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed my difficulties;
whereupon he repeated his former advice: "Give it up, give it up!"
He evidently didn't think me intellectually equipped for the
adventure. I stayed half an hour, and he was most good-natured,
but I couldn't help pronouncing him a man of unstable moods. He
had been free with me in a mood, he had repented in a mood, and now
in a mood he had turned indifferent. This general levity helped me
to believe that, so far as the subject of the tip went, there
wasn't much in it. I contrived however to make him answer a few
more questions about it, though he did so with visible impatience.
For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about was
vividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan,
something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly
approved of this image when I used it, and he used another himself.