"I don't know what you mean, Madam."
She tapped the floor impatiently with her feet, and said:
"No pretences, please. You remember that you told me once that you had no sweetheart, but that poem"—and oh, horror and dismay! she held up a paper bag on which I had written only the day before, and which I had never intended to show to anybody—"that poem does not say the same. Where is he? What profession is he in? Have you got his photo?"
I took my hands out of the hot dish-water, and covered my face.
"Don't be so silly," she continued. "I am a married woman, and you may trust me. Now, come, out with it," and while she said that she looked at me half commandingly, half lovingly. My hands dropped, and I noticed how very red and ugly they were. A new shame overcame me.
"It is true," I said at last.
"That you have got a sweetheart?"
"No; I mean that I have not got one."
"But this poem?" and, greatly puzzled, she looked down at the bag that was smelling of coffee.
"I don't know who he is, nor where he is;" and with sudden courage: "all I know is that he does exist."