“Well,” he answered, “before we crossed the big divide I wasn’t aware of your existence, and I’d only a hazy idea that I might come to England some day. Now, if I may say it, I’ve joined your group of friends and entered into their lives. One feels it can’t have sprung from nothing; it isn’t blind chance.”
She mused for a few moments.
“It’s strange,” she asserted, “but I’ve had something of the same feeling. You seem to have become a part of things, a connecting link between us all—Mrs. Gladwyne, Clarence, Nasmyth, and even young Crestwick. One could almost fancy that some mysterious agency were working upon us through you.”
He did not wish her to pursue this train of thought too far.
“I’ve promised to take Jim Crestwick back with me,” he said. “I’m going as soon as I’m fit to get about.”
“Going back, in a few weeks?”
“Yes. In many ways, I’m sorry; but I’ve had some letters that show it’s needful. Business calls.”
She made no reply for some moments. There was no doubt that she would miss him badly, and she recalled the strange and tense anxiety of which she had been conscious when he had fallen at the hurdles.
“We have come to look upon you as one of us,” she told him simply. “Somehow we never contemplated your going away, and now it seems an almost unnatural thing.”
“It would be, if I broke off the connection with my English friends, but I think that can’t be done. We’re to see more of each other; I’m to be your guide when you come out next year.”