He looked at me at present well enough. "I knew you were passing, but I wanted precisely to mark for you the difference. If you really want to know," the poor man confessed, "I was a little ashamed of myself. I had given her away to you, you know, rather, before."
"And you were bound you wouldn't do it again?"
He smiled in his now complete candour. "Ah, there was no reason." Then he used, happily, to right himself, my own expression. "She was all there."
"I see—I see." Yet I really didn't see enough not to have for an instant to turn away.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To do what Brissenden came to me for."
"But I don't know, you see, what Brissenden came to you for."
"Well, with a message. She was to have seen me this evening, but, as she gave me no chance, I was afraid I had lost it and that, so rather awkwardly late, she didn't venture. But what he arrived for just now, at her request, was to say she does venture."
My companion stared. "At this extraordinary hour?"
"Ah, the hour," I laughed, "is no more extraordinary than any other part of the business: no more so, for instance, than this present talk of yours and mine. What part of the business isn't extraordinary? If it is, at all events, remarkably late, that's her fault."