In her own ears her voice did not ring quite true. She knew that her liveliness was a little factitious. She wondered whether he had detected it. She looked up at him, and found that he was gazing full at her. She had never before recognized how clear his eyes were and how piercing.
“I haven’t thanked you yet for those lovely violets,” she began again, hastily. “They are exquisite! But then you have always such good taste in flowers. They have made the day less dreary for me—really they have. They were company in my loneliness.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You lonely?” he asked. “How can that be?”
“Why not?” she returned.
“You have made yourself a home here,” he answered, looking about the room. “You have hosts of friends in New York. Whenever I see you in society you are surrounded by admirers. How can you be lonely?”
She was about to make an impetuous reply, but she checked herself.
“I am not really a New-Yorker, you know,” she said at last. “I am a stranger in a strange city. You don’t know what that means.”
“I think I do,” he responded. “The city is even stranger to me than it can be to you.”
“I doubt it,” she responded.
“I was once at sea alone in an open boat for three days,” he went on, “and—it must seem absurd to you, very absurd, I suppose—but I was not as lonely as I am, now and then, in the midst of the millions of people here in New York.”