"Oh!" came the uncertain voice weakly. "Did you want me? Did anyone want me?"
She heard the door being closed behind him.
She told him, with peculiar curtness, how she had seen him from her window, and how she wished to ask him an important question.
"I dare say you think it's very queer of me," she added.
"Not at all," he said, with an insincerity that annoyed her.
"Yes, you do!" she sharply insisted. "But I want to know"--what did she want to know?--"I want to know--did you mean it when you said--you know, at supper--that there's no virtue in believing?"
He stammered: "Did I say there was no virtue in believing?"
She cried out, irritated: "Of course you did! Do you mean to say you can say a thing like that and then forget about it? If it's true, it's one of the most wonderful things that were ever said. And that's why I wanted to know if you meant it, of whether you were only saying it because it sounded clever."
She stopped momentarily, wondering why she was thus implying an untruth; for the fact was that she had never doubted that he had been in earnest.
"That's what they're always doing in that house, you know--being clever!" she went on, in a tone apparently inimical to 'that house.'