"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"
"Because—don't you see? Oh, surely you must see—because—he's the one."
XV
Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward. During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.
"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"
After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak carefully.
"I heard them call him Mr. Strange—"
"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met other Stranges—"
"Oh yes. So have I."
"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you? That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him—Strange, I mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, he won't fail in business, I bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went there. Wonderful country—the United States of South America some people call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a nice long chat with him."