"You 're awfully good," he said, looking down at the gracious little old figure in the easy chair.
"I 'm an old woman," said she. "All old women love a lover. You renew the romance of things for us. You transport us back, a century or so, to our hot youth, when George the Third was king, and we were lovers ourselves. Et in Arcadia ego—but I 've lost my Greek."
"You 'll never lose your Pierian," said Anthony, bowing.
He took her hand, bent over it, and touched it with his lips.
"If flattery can make friends, you 'll not lack 'em," said she, with a pretty, pleased old blush.
"But I 've not yet emptied my sack," said he, relapsing into gloom.
"There's a further and perhaps a greater difficulty."
"Let's hear the further difficulty," cheerily proposed Miss Sandus. Then, as he appeared to hesitate, "Has it anything to do with her former marriage?"
"You divine my thoughts," he replied, in an outburst. "Yet," he more lightly added, "you know, I don't in the least believe in her former marriage. She seems so—well, if not exactly girlish, so young, so immaculately fresh, it's impossible to believe in. None the less, of course, it 's an irrevocable fact, and it's a complication. I must n't intrude on sacred ground. If she still grieves . . ."
A gesture conveyed the rest.
"Look here," said Miss Sandus, abruptly. "I'm going to betray a trust. Think what you will of me, I 'm going to violate a confidence. She does n't grieve, she has never grieved. Your intuitions about her are right to the letter. She was never married, except in name—it was purely a marriage of convenience—the man was a complete nonentity. Don't ask me the whys and the wherefores. But make what you will of that which I 've been indiscreet enough to tell you."