"Not everything," he assured me seriously, "and not about everybody. Only some things, and about my—well, I can say we are friends, can't I?"
This, of course, melted me again to him. I had to look away, back over the yard, the cloister-like sheds, the now-smiling country beyond.
"Friends? Oh, yes," I said.
"Then tell me what you were going to say when you began, 'if you must know'?"
Still looking away, I finished the sentence.
"If you must know," I said, "'they' sailed for Salonika days before I left London."
Very quickly he said:
"That was why you left?"
"Yes," I admitted.
The main lines of the story were known to him now. I didn't care.