An American girl, who was new to the country, came up with her hand full of coins, and asked him hopelessly "whatever they were worth." He explained, and gave her change: Miss Raby was not sure that he gave her right change.
"When I was a lad——" He was again interrupted, to speed two parting guests. One of them tipped him; he said, "Thank you." The other did not tip him; he said, "Thank you," all the same but not in the same way. Obviously he had as yet no recollections of Miss Raby.
"When I was a lad, Vorta was a poor little place."
"But a pleasant place?"
"Very pleasant, madam."
"Kouf!" said the Russian Prince, suddenly waking up and startling them both. He clapped on a felt hat, and departed at full speed for a constitutional. Miss Raby and Feo were left together.
It was then that she ceased to hesitate, and determined to remind him that they had met before. All day she had sought for a spark of life, and it might be summoned by pointing to that other fire which she discerned, far back in the travelled distance, high up in the mountains of youth. What he would do, if he also discerned it, she did not know; but she hoped that he would become alive, that he at all events would escape the general doom which she had prepared for the place and the people. And what she would do, during their joint contemplation, she did not even consider.
She would hardly have ventured if the sufferings of the day had not hardened her. After much pain, respectability becomes ludicrous. And she had only to overcome the difficulty of Feo's being a man, not the difficulty of his being a concierge. She had never observed that spiritual reticence towards social inferiors which is usual at the present day.
"This is my second visit," she said boldly. "I stayed at the Biscione twenty years ago."
He showed the first sign of emotion: that reference to the Biscione annoyed him.