“It was nice of you to come,” she said. “I should be feeling horribly lonely now if I had had this wait alone.”
“The train’s late,” he said. “God bless the lack of unpunctuality. I’ve half a mind to go with you. I don’t know why I don’t go. I don’t know why I stay on in a God-forsaken hole on the top of a mountain which leads nowhere. Do you?”
She laughed.
“I suppose you like it,” she said. “And the air is fine.”
“A man can’t live on air.”
“But you don’t live there,” she said. For the first time it occurred to her that she did not know where he lived; she knew surprisingly little about him.
“I don’t live anywhere; I drift,” he said.
He met her eyes and read the curiosity in them, their unspoken criticism, and smiled. But he did not give her any information. He started to talk again on impersonal matters, while she looked away into the green tangle of the trees and wondered about him.
On the way to the station he gave her a book, which he took from his pocket and handed to her with the remark that it would relieve the tedium of the train journey. She read the title, “David Harum,” and flushed with pleasure as she thanked him.
“I hope you will like it,” he said. “I have found him a good companion.”