Ellison made as if he would like to cover it up.
"Oh, you can't hide it now. I noticed it directly you showed yourself this morning. I wonder who gave it you? for of course you've been fighting. I don't like a quarrelsome man!"
"I'm sorry I should appear before you in such a bad light, for naturally I want to stand well with you."
"I understand. You mean about the billet. Well, will you tell me how you got it—the eye, I mean?"
"Willingly, if you think it will make my case any better."
"I'm not quite sure that it will, but you'd better go on."
She laid herself back in the great chair and folded her hands behind her head. Her face struck him in a new light. There was an expression on it he had not expected to find there; its presence harmonised with the pictures and the piano and made him pause before he spoke. In that moment he changed his mind and let the words he was about to speak die unuttered.
"The story is simple enough. I was drawn into a quarrel and obliged to fight a man. I broke his jaw, he gave me this and this."
He pointed first to his eye and then to his ear. She nodded her head and smiled.
"Do you know that you have come out of that test very well?"