“You left sixpence on the desk. I noted it down.”
“It is very kind of you,” said Matt. “I had no idea you would remember me all this time.”
“I never forget clever people,” said Madame, with a bewitching smile.
“How do you know I’m clever?” Matt smiled back.
Madame waved away the question with her plump white hand in silent smiling reaffirmation. “I’ve always lived with clever people,” she said, simply. “Talent is the only thing I admire in this world.”
Matt said lamely that he was glad to hear it. The phrase was a poor expression of his pleasure in at last meeting a soul with his own ideals.
“Where was it you saw my husband’s pictures?” asked Madame, eagerly.
Matt flushed. “I didn’t see any,” he confessed. “My father told me about them.”
“Where did your father see them?”
“At home, when they were boys together.”