She glanced at him curiously.
“You seem to have known quite a lot about me,” she said. “It’s funny hearing all this now.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Odd to have run up against you like this! I knew you again at once.”
“You have a good memory for faces,” she observed. “I feel I ought to have recognised you.”
“Ah! but I was defeated,” he reminded her smilingly,—“defeated all round. And there was no reason why you should have noticed a stranger particularly. They were pretty well all strange faces to me, you see; and I was amusing myself by picking out a few. It’s a habit of mine. I fix on a face and construct a story in connection with it.”
“Did you construct a story about me?”
“I forget,” he returned evasively. “Quite possibly I did... But it was entirely wrong, anyway. When a man constructs a story in connection with a girl’s face, he doesn’t provide her with a lover, unless—”
“Unless?” prompted Pamela. She was faintly amused with the halting recital which showed a tendency to break off at the most interesting points. She glanced at him with a laugh in her eyes, and repeated encouragingly: “Unless?”
“Well, the answer is fairly obvious,” he replied, smiling too. “Do you want me to go on?”
“No,” she said, and flushed and looked away again, but the laughter was still in her eyes. “I think I can imagine the rest.”