She leaned forward for an instant and touched his hand.
“Bear!” she said, teasingly. “Did I rub your fur the wrong way?” Then, seeing his expression, she tactfully changed her tone. “I'll explain. It was the same thing that struck me the night of Blanche's party—when you looked at me over Leonard Kaine's head. You remember?” She glanced away from him across the Park to where the grass was already showing greener.
Chilcote felt ill at ease. Again he put his hand to his coat collar.
“Oh yes,” he said, hastily—“yes.” He wished now that he had questioned Loder more closely on the proceedings of that party. It seemed to him, on looking back, that Loder had mentioned nothing on the day of their last exchange but the political complications that absorbed his mind.
“I couldn't explain then,” Lillian went on. “I couldn't explain before a crowd of people that it wasn't your dark head showing over Leonard's red one that surprised me, but the most wonderful, the most extraordinary likeness—” She paused.
The car was moving slower; there was a delight in the easy motion through the fresh, early air. But Chilcote's uneasiness had been aroused. He no longer felt soothed.
“What likeness?” he asked, sharply.
She turned to him easily. “Oh, a likeness I have noticed before,” she said. “A likeness that always seemed strange, but that suddenly became incredible at Blanche's party.”
He moved quickly. “Likenesses are an illusion,” he said, “a mere imagination of the brain!” His manner was short; his annoyance seemingly out of all proportion to its cause. Lillian looked at him afresh in slightly interested surprise.
“Yet not so very long ago, you yourself—” she began.