"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr. Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"
"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a month."
"Then you might have come to see me sooner."
"Well, you see—"
He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile. She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him as something else.
"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many things—naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we had met before."
"No, of course not. But last night you might have—"
"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks. It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating—"
"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very people who—"
"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's pleasant—"