"When you were a boy?"
"No, since I have become a man. Just—just recently."
"People fancy they are happy," she murmured.
"Isn't that the same thing as being happy?"
"Perhaps." Then suddenly changing the subject: "You haven't told me about your journey. Just a bare statement that there was a delay on the railway and another delay on the steamer. Don't you think you ought to fill in the details?"
So I filled them in; but I said nothing about my mysterious enemy who had accompanied me, and who after strangely disappearing and reappearing had disappeared again; nor about the woman whom I had met on the Admiralty Pier. I wondered when he might reappear once more. There was no proper reason why I should not have told Rosa about these persons, but some instinctive feeling, some timidity of spirit, prevented me from doing so.
"How thrilling! Were you frightened on the steamer?" she asked.
"Yes," I admitted frankly.
"You may not think it," she said, "but I should not have been frightened. I have never been frightened at Death."