But, though he had stripped the masks from these mummers in the street crowds, and read their secrets of guilt or innocence, he had not supposed that the people he actually knew could be leading lives complicated in that way. And if Teevan had talked, then Teevan must have been drunk. He would see her to-morrow night, and she would speak casually of her call at Teevan's upon some trifling errand.
Yet, when night came again and he stood in her presence, the first devouring look at her shocked him momentarily out of all thought of Teevan's maunderings. She was drooping and wasted and flatly pale. He scarcely knew her face, with the eyes burning at him from black rings. He took her hand, nursing it gently, standing helpless and hurt before her.
"You are so changed," he said fearfully, "so changed! Oh, you are so changed!"
But she laughed with her familiar gayety, tossing her head in denial. He still scanned her face. Some resemblance there, some sinister memory of her look on another face, was stirring him. He could almost remember what it meant. At last her eyes fell before his and she drew her hand quickly away.
"Really, I won't have any talk of myself. I hear too much of that. I'm a bit run down, that's all. We found Florida enervating. Even dad was affected by it and forgot his philosophy. So, an end to that. I must hear of you, of your work."
She sat down, drawing a white scarf about her shoulders, and leaning toward him in the old inviting way.
"Tell me what you have done—everything there is to tell about it."
All at once he remembered.
"Last night," he began uneasily—"I wanted to see you last night—"
"You couldn't have seen me last night." She smiled in a way that brought out all the weak, wasted look of her face. "I was busy—I was trying to adjust something that has troubled me more than I can tell you."