“And why should he have wanted you in particular?”
“Simply because I struck him as the right person. That’s his affair: I can’t tell you. When he meets the right person he chalks him. I sat on the bed. There were only two chairs in the dirty little room and by way of curtain his overcoat was hung up before the window. He himself didn’t sit; he leaned against the wall straight in front of me, his hands behind him. He told me certain things and his manner was extraordinarily quiet. So was mine, I think I may say; and indeed it was only poor Poupin who made a row. It was for my sake somehow: he didn’t think we were all conscious enough; he wanted to call attention to my sublimity. There was no sublimity about it—I simply couldn’t help myself. He and the other German had the two chairs and Muniment sat on a queer old, battered, hair-covered trunk, a most foreign-looking article.” Hyacinth had taken no notice of the little ejaculation with which his companion greeted in this last sentence the word “other.”
“And what did Mr. Muniment say?” she presently asked.
“Oh he said it was all right. Of course he thought so from the moment he determined to bring me. He knew what the other fellow was looking for.”
“I see.” Then the Princess added: “We’ve a curious way of being fond of you.”
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?”
“Your friends. Mr. Muniment and I for instance.”
“I like it as well as any other. But you don’t feel alike. I’ve an idea you yourself are sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“That I’ve put my head into a noose.”