I do not know how it was that I said what I did—those five quite unpremeditated words. My voice sounded odd in my own ears as I spoke. Yet it was quite in a normal matter-of-fact voice that I did speak. Standing there on the hill slope where the black and the grey speckled poultry clucked about our feet, I looked up at the young man again and asked him this question:
"Isn't your name Richard Wynn?"
CHAPTER XV
MOSTLY CONVERSATION
"To talk of Love is soon to make Love."—PROVERB.
After this strange question of mine, there was a moment's pause.
It rang in my ears still, my quick, but quietly uttered,—
"Isn't your name Richard Wynn?"
What on earth had possessed me to say that? The moment after I was as surprised at it as he was himself. Or wasn't he surprised? His face had hardly changed. He looked quite steadily back at me. What did he think? I wondered in a flash. What would he say?
Quite quietly he replied: