"Good evening," said this goddess, looking decidedly embarrassed and remarkably pretty. "I—I am so glad that we've found you."
"You were looking for me?" he said incredulous, utterly mystified; and the instinct of long training, working on with no guidance from him, impelled him to rise with a stiff and somewhat belated bow.
"Yes. And there are two men with me who are anxious to help…."
Her fragrant presence seemed to fill and transform the dingy office; and he was at once aware that her manner had lost that cool remoteness which at their last meeting had set him so far away.
He pulled himself sharply together, entirely missing the implication in her speech, and struck abruptly to the one point that mattered.
"Some one has convinced you since last night that I am not that man."
"Yes," she answered, looking away from him with faintly heightened color. "I—I must ask you to forgive me for—last night."
He bowed stiffly from behind the table.
"But who—if I may know—persuaded you, where I appeared so—"
"My mother," she said, simply. "She caught a glimpse of you on the street yesterday. I did not know of it till to-day—never dreamed that she knew you. I'm glad," she added hurriedly, resolutely contrite, "of the chance to—to say this—"