Her hands offered no evidence of this, however. "Well, we must try to make things easier for you, Anna. Now let us talk it over."
"I'll wash my hands first and tidy up a bit," and she went into the adjoining room, where I heard her moving some furniture into place.
This gave an opportunity of scrutinizing the mean little sitting-room, and one fact was instantly apparent. There was not a single thing to suggest that a child had even set foot in it. On the floor close to the shabby sofa was a partly open leather bag; much too good and expensive to be in keeping with the rest, and a glance into it revealed a number of dressing-table fitments, also much better than a struggling working woman would be at all likely to own.
She had forgotten this in her confusion at my arrival and presently came out to fetch it, still in the untidy slovenly dress. "I won't be a minute, now," she said.
But several minutes passed before she returned, wearing now a well-fitting coat and skirt and cosmeticed much as she had been when we had met first.
"I try to keep my head above water, you see," she said, to account for her good clothes, no doubt.
I smiled approval and got to business. "First let me ask you whether you are absolutely certain I am the man you think."
"Do you think I should have made that fuss to-day if I wasn't? Why do you ask such a question?"
"Because I don't remember anything whatever of it, and to me you are an absolute stranger. Just tell me everything about it."
Her story was in its essence that which von Erstein had told me, repeated as if she had got it up much as she would have studied her part in a play. She was not very perfect in it, and there were just those verbal slips and trips which one may hear in a badly rehearsed play on the first night of production. Moreover, apart from her lines she was hopelessly muddled and had either been very badly coached about details or her memory was little better than my assumed one.