"Of course."
"And you'll wear it?"
"I shall love it."
"Then, when I come next summer," said I, "I shall see you in it."
We were laughing about it after we had reached the cliffs when suddenly there came the figure of a man along the winding path. He was alone, and even though I knew but few of the people in Ballysheen by sight there seemed to me something familiar in his presence there.
"Who's this?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"I've never seen him before," she replied.
But as he came nearer a memory seemed to quiver in my mind. I had seen him. But where? Where? It was as he passed us in silence that I remembered. For in that moment his eyes looked with recognition into mine. In the flash of that moment it all came back. In the restaurant—that night at supper—talking to that woman over their coffee and liqueur—Clarissa's lover—the man I had come to hate.
"My God!" I muttered, when he had gone by, and as I looked up into Bellwattle's face her cheeks were quite white.