 accent. One hadn't been noting tones all one's life without
recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position. The dear man in
the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably in one - which was no
small point gained; what next accordingly concerned us was the determination of
this identity. One could only go by probabilities, but there was the advantage
that the most general of the probabilities were virtual certainties. Possessed
of our friend's nationality, to start with, there was a general probability in
his narrower localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to keep under
the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets. He would have issued, our
rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England - at the heels of which matter
of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled for me into the light. They had to
be sifted and sorted, and I shall not reproduce the detail of that process; but
unmistakeably they were all there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of
picking among them. What the position would infallibly be, and why, on his
hands, it had turned false - these inductive steps could only be as rapid as
they were distinct. I accounted for everything - and everything had by this time
become the most promising quantity - by the view that he had come to Paris in
some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as a result of new and
unexpected assaults and infusions, a change almost from hour to hour. He had
come with a view that might have been figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a
neat glass phial; and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of application,
once exposed to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red,
or whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to black, to
yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for all he could say
to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would at first, naturally, but
have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby the situation clearly would spring
from the play of wildness and the development of extremes. I saw in a moment
that, should this development proceed both with force and logic, my story would
leave nothing to be desired. There is always, of course, for the story-teller,
the irresistible determinant and the incalculable advantage of his interest in
the story as such; it is ever, obviously, overwhelmingly, the prime and precious
thing (
