“Well—hasn’t he come this time?”
“Rather! That’s my trouble—I can’t see things in any way but his. And I want another eye to help me.”
My heart was beating rather excitedly. I felt small, trivial and inadequate, like an intruder on some grave exchange of confidences.
I tried to postpone my reply, and at the same time to satisfy another curiosity. “Have you ever told Mrs. Delane about—about him?”
Delane roused himself and turned to look at me. He lifted his shaggy eyebrows slightly, protruded his lower lip, and sank once more into abstraction.
“Well, sir,” I said, answering the look, “I believe in him.”
The blood rose in his dark cheek. He turned to me again, and for a second the dimple twinkled through his gloom. “That’s your answer?”
I nodded breathlessly.
He got up, walked the length of the room, and came back, pausing in front of me. “He just vanished. I never even knew his name....”