"Is it very noticeable?" I asked, just escaping the pitfall of admitting that I remembered something about it. Rosa laughed and nodded. The ordeal was over, and the danger point passed; and soon afterwards she said she wanted to speak to me alone, and asked me to make an effort to get up.
I made the effort, laughed to myself as I cleaned my teeth that they should have been mistaken for false ones, and went downstairs to find Rosa waiting impatiently for me.
"I should have thought you could put those awful clothes on in half the time you've taken, Johann, but you were always slow in dressing," she bantered; and I was quite content to be chipped for a time until she was ready to come to the discussion of our own affairs.
"Is it true you've quite lost your memory?" she asked as Hans had done.
"The Rotterdam doctors said I should recover it. But I'm afraid I shouldn't have known even you."
"Don't you remember anything about my letters?" I shook my head. "Nor your own either?" Another wag of the head. "Well, do you still want to make me marry you?"
"I don't know. You're very pretty, Rosa."
"For Heaven's sake don't begin to pay me stupid compliments. I hate them. Hans takes good care I shan't forget my face isn't my fortune; and the moment a man begins to talk about my looks, I know he's thinking about my money. At least most of them," she qualified after a pause.
I understood the qualification. "Then there's an exception?"
She flushed slightly and was a little confused. "Yes, there is," she replied after a pause. "You'll have to know it some time, so you may as well know it now;" and she tossed her head defiantly. "I believe in coming straight to the point, Johann; and the question is whether you are still in the same mind as when you sent me that idiotic photograph, three months ago—the silly thing isn't a bit like you—and if you are, we had better face things at once."