"Quite, if you ask me," said Lanyard dryly--"quite likely, if any circumstance connected with that face were at all memorable."
"But I assure you I was in those days much too self-absorbed to pay much attention to others. It is that way, you know, in maiden days."
"Mademoiselle does injustice to her memory," Lanyard insisted in polite astonishment. "In some ways it is wonderful."
The woman looked suddenly aside, so that he could not see her face; but he perceived, with an astonishment which he made no attempt to hide, that she was quaking bodily with some unconfessed emotion. And when she faced again his unbroken look of grave bewilderment, he discovered that she was really capable of tears.
"Monsieur," she gasped, "believe it or not, never before have I met one with whom I was so completely en rapport. And instantaneously! It is priceless, this! We must see more of one another."
"Much more," Lanyard assented gravely. "A great deal more," she supplemented with significance. "I am sure we shall get along together famously."
"Mademoiselle offers me great honour--"
"Nothing less than my friendship."
"I would be indeed an ingrate to refuse it. But a question: Will not people talk?"
"What!" Amusement shook her again. "How talk? What more can they say about Liane Delorme?"