"Oh, you didn't see it?"
"That's what Molly asked. I satisfied her that I hadn't."
"Suppose you had—before you met me! But never mind. I did find them at Chambéry. They'd just arrived, and I told Molly everything."
"What did she say?"
"Oh, she just lent me some of her clothes, and said they'd take me with them in the automobile, out of danger's way until we could decide on a plan. I bought the thing you call a 'mushroom' in a shop, and we were starting off next morning when—you came along. Well––"
"Well?"
"Molly and Jack were in a very awkward position: for I had said to Molly that I felt I could never face you again—never, anyhow, as the Boy, and that he had gone out of your life irrevocably. There I sat in the motor car, and there were you in the street. You can't imagine how I felt. It would have been horrid for them—your best friends—to leave you stranded, and—I didn't want that either. I couldn't help feeling there'd be a tremendous fascination in being so near you, with my face hidden, you not knowing, if only the strain of it needn't last too long; and Molly just cut the Gordian knot of the scrape, as she always does. She assured me that being in the same car need commit me to no decision as to what I would do in the end. But—you remember how she drew you out, about your feeling for the Boy, how you missed him, and how you were going all the way down to Monte Carlo on the bare chance of his being there? Well, she meant me to hear every word, and I did. After that—after that—I—couldn't give you up. I don't believe I could, anyway, when I'd straightened things out in my mind. I'd told you that you would never see the Boy again, and you never will; but Molly said that was no reason why you shouldn't see the Boy's sister. I wrote a note from him to you, for myself to bring to-night, and I thought—I hoped—you might perhaps believe––"
"You couldn't have hoped it," I broke in. "Say that you came to give me back my Little Pal, whom you had stolen from me."
"It may be. I don't know, myself. I couldn't foresee what would happen. As I heard you say, about motoring down steep hills, I just hurled myself into space, and trusted to Providence."
"Now I understand all that was mysterious in myself," I said. "My heart, not being such a fool as my head, was trying continually to telegraph the truth about the Little Pal to my brain, which couldn't get the message right, as there was far too much electricity flying about in the atmosphere. Now I know why I loved the Boy so dearly, because he was you; because he was that Other Half which every man is always unconsciously looking for, round the world, and hardly ever finds."