The glow faded, and she relaxed her nervous energy. "Ah, hadn't you? I wonder!"
"Why, had you ever seen me before that day?"
"I think so. At least you seem, somehow, familiar."
"When was it, and where, then?"
She seemed too puzzled to answer, or fatigued with following an intangible thread of thought. As she spoke, slowly, intensely, her hands made large, vague gestures, often pausing in mid air, as her voice paused, waiting for the proper word to come. "I don't know. It only seems as if I had been with you—or near you, or something—I don't know what. It's like a dream—or a story I can't quite recall, only—" she did not finish the sentence.
He wondered what her game could be. Fundamentally cynical, though he never permitted it to show in his manner, he distrusted her claims to prevision. There was, after all, nothing in Miss Payson's words that might not be accounted for by what he knew of the wiles of feminine psychology. His training had taught him how much a baseless hint, injected at the proper moment, could accomplish in the masquerade of emotions and the crafty warfare of the sexes. That he and she had been actors together in a past uncomprehended scene, he regarded as a mere coincidence of which he had already made good use; he refused to connect it with her suggestive remark, for he was sure that she must have been unaware of his presence in Madam Grant's room that day, so long ago. It seemed to him more likely that, woman-fashion, she had shot into the air and had brought down an unsuspected quarry. And yet, even as a coincidence, he could not quite dismiss the strangeness of it from his mind.
He was preparing to turn it to a sentimental advantage, when Clytie, who had relapsed into silence, suddenly aroused herself with one of those impulsive outbursts which were characteristic of her.
"There is something about it all that is stranger still, I think!"
Her golden brows had drawn together, separated by two vertical lines, as she gazed at him. Then with a little jet of fervor, she added:
"I'm afraid I know too much about you, Mr. Granthope! It's somewhat embarrassing, really. It doesn't seem quite fair, you know."