"I don't know," I persisted, rattling the wire-netted door. "I've forgotten Mr. Wynn's face."
"You can't have 'forgotten' the face of a man you saw every day of your life for six months," Captain Holiday informed me, authoritatively. "You must have been what? Thirteen or fourteen. No girl 'forgets' a man's face like that!"
"She does!" I declared.
"People don't 'forget' faces," he repeated. "It's nonsense."
"It is not," I cried, half-laughing, half-exasperated, as I rose. "People do forget what they've never taken very much notice of, even when it was there! I've no memory at all for faces. I only know what I thought of them at the time."
I thought his next question would be, "What did you think of the young man you imagine was like me?" But this was not what came. He demanded, more casually. "And what became of him?"
"I don't know," I replied. "I never heard. Except——" Here I suppressed a half-rueful smile at the thought of what I had heard, only some weeks ago, from this same long-forgotten Richard Wynn.
"Except what?" took up the Inquisitor.
I sighed elaborately. For a moment I felt almost inclined to tell him deliberately the whole madcap story of Richard Wynn's proposal of marriage to me; but for some reason I didn't.
So, looking straight at him, I adopted a tone of studied and explanatory politeness. I hoped this gentle irony might have the effect of making him a little bit ashamed of all his questions.