"It's something to do with the shape of my eyebrows, the colour of my hair, the way I smile and that sort of thing."
"Mr. Vivian, I'll tell you now, that I've never felt sensible in all my life."
"Really!" ejaculated the Prophet, still firmly holding all his features together in an unyielding expression of fixed curiosity.
"Never once, however great the provocation. And in my family, with the Chieftain, the provocation you can understand is exceptionally great."
The Marquis of Glome, who was the head of a clan called "The MacArdells," was always named the Chieftain by his relations and friends.
"I felt sure it must be," said the Prophet, decisively.
"Nevertheless it is so extremely difficult, if not impossible, not to try to be what people take you for that I was in a perpetual condition of acting sensibly, against my true nature."
"How very trying!" murmured the Prophet, mechanically.
"It was, Mr. Vivian. It often made me fell quite ill. Nobody but you knows how I have suffered."
"And why do I know?" inquired the Prophet.
"Because I realised yesterday that you must be almost as silly by nature as I am."
"When you said to Sir Tiglath that you could prophesy."
The Prophet stiffened. She laughed almost affectionately.
"So absurd! But I was vexed when you said you'd give it up. You mustn't do that, or you'll be flying in the face of your own folly."
She drew the Aberdeen lean-to, which ran easily on Edinburgh castors, a little nearer to him, and continued.
"At least I felt obliged to seek an outlet. I could not stifle my real self for ever, and yet I could not be comfortably silly with those who were absolutely convinced of my permanent good sense. I tried to be several times.
"So at last I was driven to the double life."
"MacSpillan! No! I took a cab--a four-wheeler--at the corner of the Square, and the name of Minerva Partridge. It's a silly name, isn't it?"
She asked the question with earnest anxiety.
"Quite idiotic," said the Prophet, reassuringly.
"I felt quite sure it was," she cried, obviously comforted. "Because it came to me so inevitably. I was so perfectly natural--and alone--when I invented it. No one helped me."
"I assure you," reiterated the Prophet, "there is no doubt the name is absolutely and entirely idiotic."