“Ah, you are like all men, ever ready with a compliment.”
“But it seems as if I was drawn to you by some power I cannot express,” he continued, looking deep into her eyes.
“Do I remind you of some old friend, some old love?” she banteringly asked, though it was easy to perceive that she longed for an affirmative reply.
“That is just what puzzles me, Miss Bennett. It seems as if your face was familiar, and yet I could never have met you before.”
“Are you sure?” She looked up with one of those expressions of childhood days when she had clung to him and begged him to come again to her in Duke’s Lane.
His eyes scanned her; his thoughts traveled back many years. “How like Marie Colchis was that expression,” he said to himself; yet he gave no utterance to his thoughts.
“She was dead, dead long years ago!” Then, aloud, he slowly said: “Yes; I am sure.”
“Then, how can you account for the power of attraction which draws you to me?” she persisted.
“I know not its cause,” he smilingly returned, “unless it be that perhaps all men are similarly attracted. I am but mortal, Miss Bennett, and consequently cannot resist the loadstone of so much grace and loveliness.”
Thus they met, and thus they talked. He knew her not, nor did she reveal her identity. She wished to test the man she loved; and why? Ask a woman!