"Does it?" asked Louise. "You forget that, if it makes you feel aged, it should make me feel at least middle aged, don't you? And I believe in Santa Claus and in fairy tales yet, I think." Then, resuming the first thread: "It seems singular that there should have been a time when you knew me and I didn't know you; that is, to remember you. For I didn't remember you at all on the train that day. Come to think of it, you didn't remember me, either, until you were reminded—that telegram, you know. An odd chance, was it not?"
"So odd," said Blythe, "that I catch myself wondering what my life had been before and what it would be now if—" He paused, already groping for words;—"if I had missed that train."
Louise, far from missing his meaning, grasped it so acutely that Blythe caught the tell-tale color mounting to her face.
"And now I am wondering," he went on, gazing for comfort at his nails, "since we are on the subject, whether my having known you for such a long, long time confers upon me the privilege of—well, of being entirely candid with you?"
"I should expect candor, in any case—from you," said Louise, trying desperately to concentrate her mind upon something quite matter-of-fact in order to keep her color down.
"Why, particularly, from me?" said Blythe, grasping at straws.
"Oh, I can hardly say—because you are the embodiment of candor, or candor itself," said Louise. "Aren't you?"
"I don't know," he answered as if really in doubt about it—as he was. "It seems to me that if I actually possessed that quality in such a high degree, I should have proved it to you, Louise, before this. Proved it, for example, in the Park the other afternoon."
Louise knew quite well what he meant. Moreover, it never occurred to her to pretend that she did not know.
"Are you sure that you did not?" she asked him, flushing, but with a direct enough gaze.