It came to my lips to give some irrelevant answer. Why should I tell her? Would she understand it if I did? But then there flashed across my mind the belief I always hold that above all creatures women are gifted with understanding, and I told her of the story I had just heard.
"And what's that to do with me?" she asked.
"Nothing," I replied, "and everything. One woman in trouble is the whole world of women in distress. What I have to complain of is that they never come to me. You did. That's why I brought you in here. If this child in Ireland were to appeal to me—"
"How can she?"
"That's true," said I, "she doesn't know me."
She looked at me queerly—deedily is the word—and, almost in a whisper, she asked, "Why don't you go to her?"
I leant back in my chair and laughed.
"What, become a Don Quixote!" said I. "Go out and tilt at windmills, try to pose knight-errant to a child who's lost her heart to some one else! What's the good of saving any woman from her own infatuation? She'll only hate you for it."
She looked me strangely in the face.
"She'll thank you for it one day," she said, and there were whole years of terror in her voice.