“No. I had always believed in it.”
“Not at first?”
“No; of late.”
She looked away from me now, but I saw her lips curve in a reluctant little smile. I laughed.
“I don’t think my ideas about it had any particular relation to external facts,” I confessed. “I had become a Legitimist, and Legitimists are always allowed to dream.”
She gave my arm a little pat and then drew her hand gently away.
“If it all comes to nothing, I shall have one friend still,” she said.
“And one faithful hopeful adherent. And there’s your train.”
When I put her in the carriage, my madness came back to me. I actually watched her eyes as though to see the invitation I waited for take its birth there. Of course I saw no such thing. But I seemed to see a great friendliness for me. At the last, when I had pressed her hand and then shut the door, I whispered—
“Are you afraid?”