Kirkwood grinned again, a trace unsympathetically; he was unable to simulate any enthusiasm on the subject of poor Freddie, whom he had sized up with passable acumen as a spoiled and coddled child completely under the thumb of an extremely clever mother.
"Yes," he responded vaguely; "he'll be quite fit after a night's sleep, I dare say."
The woman was watching him keenly, beneath her lowered lashes. "I think," she said deliberately, "that it is time we came to an understanding."
Kirkwood agreed—"Yes?" affably.
"I purpose being perfectly straightforward. To begin with, I don't place you, Mr. Kirkwood. You are an unknown quantity, a new factor. Won't you please tell me what you are and.... Are you a friend of Mr. Calendar's?"
"I think I may lay claim to that honor, though"—to Kirkwood's way of seeing things some little frankness on his own part would be essential if they were to get on—"I hardly know him, Mrs. Hallam. I had the pleasure of meeting him only this afternoon."
She knitted her brows over this statement.
"That, I assure you, is the truth," he laughed.
"But ... I really don't understand."
"Nor I, Mrs. Hallam. Calendar aside, I am Philip Kirkwood, American, resident abroad for some years, a native of San Francisco, of a certain age, unmarried, by profession a poor painter."