"How vain you must be!" she exclaimed.
"No; it was hardly vanity. I was ashamed of it, not for what it was, but for what it meant. It symbolized cowardice, and I was ashamed of that."
"I remember," she said; "but I'll forget it, if you'd rather."
"I would rather."
"You're stronger now, aren't you? I'm so glad."
Then for the first time came something of that old boyish lilt in his voice that recalled the Simla days—days prior to the night of the season's last dance at Viceregal Lodge, which wasn't the end of everything, after all.
"Are you glad, really?" he asked, delighted. "Do you care just that little bit?"
"Indeed I am," she told him. "I care a great deal—for your happiness. I want you to be happy."
"I'm hardly that," he confessed. "That is, I haven't been. But I'm very nearly so this evening."
She must have experienced some little emotion, for she forgot her fan for an instant and left her chin unmasked. But she lifted it again almost instantly.