“I have never met him myself,” Saton answered, “but I know that he has a letter to me. He will come to my house, I believe, and if he follows out his usual custom, he will scarcely leave it while he stays in England. I shall ask a few people to talk one night. I cannot attempt anything conventional. It does not seem to me to be an occasion for anything of the sort. If you will come, I will let you know the night and the time.”
She hesitated for a moment.
“And if you should come,” he continued, “even though it be the evening, please wear an old dress and hat. Naudheim himself seldom appears in a collar. Any social gathering of any sort is loathsome to him. He will talk only amongst those whom he believes are his friends.”
“I will come, of course,” Pauline answered. “It is good of you to think of me.”
“He may speak to you,” Saton continued. “He takes curious fancies sometimes to address a perfect stranger, and talk to them intimately. Remember that though he lives in Switzerland, and has a German name, he is really an Englishman. Nothing annoys him more than to be spoken to in any other language.”
“I will remember,” Pauline said.
There was a moment’s silence. Saton felt that he was expected to go. Yet there was something in her manner which he could not altogether understand, some nervousness, which seemed absolutely foreign to her usual demeanour. He took up his hat reluctantly.
“You are busy to-day?” he asked.
“I am always busy,” she answered. “Perhaps it is because I am so lazy. I never do anything, so there is always so much to do.”
He made the plunge, speaking without any of his usual confidence—hurriedly, almost indistinctly.