'I?'
He shrugged drearily at the absurd charge, making no motion to take the offered hand, but sat there in the corner of the hansom looking rather old and shrunken.
'You and one other,' she said.
That roused him. 'Ah, he has come, then.'
'Who?'
'The other. The man who is going to count.'
Her eyelids drooped. 'The man who was to count most for me came a long while ago. And a long while ago—he went.'
Borrodaile looked at her. 'But this—— Who is the gentleman who shares with me the doubtful, I may without undue modesty say the undeserved, honour of urging you to disappear into the slums? Who is it?'
'The man who wrote this.'
It was the book he had seen in her hands before the meeting. He read on the green cover, 'In the Days of the Comet.'