“You!” she exclaimed.
“Yes.”
She rose, and they shook hands. They stood looking at each other for a few moments, and a thousand things that had never been said seemed to be understood between them.
“Why have you come?” she asked abruptly.
“To tell you a story.”
She looked up with a sort of half smile, as if she suspected some pleasantry of which she had not yet detected the drift.
“A long story,” he explained, “which has not even the merit of being amusing. Please sit down again.”
She obeyed him.
The curtain of hanging leaves and flowers had fallen into place again; the shadowed tracery was on her dress and on the floor once more.
He stood in front of her and told her his story, as Sir John had suggested. He threw no romance into it—attempted no extenuation—but related the plain, simple facts of the last few years with the semi-cynical suggestion of humour that was sometimes his. And the cloak of pride that had fallen upon his shoulders made him hide much that was good, while he dragged forward his own shortcomings. She listened in silence. At times there hovered round her lips a smile. It usually came when he represented himself in a bad light, and there was a suggestion of superior wisdom in it, as if she knew something of which he was ignorant.