After a delicious pause Iris began again—
"Robert—I must call you Robert now—there, there, please let me get a word in even edgeways—well then, Robert dear, I do not care much what happens now. I suppose it was very wicked and foolish of me to speak as I did before—before you called me Iris. Now tell me at once. Why did you call me Iris?"
"You must propound that riddle to your godfather."
"No wriggling, please. Why did you do it?"
"Because I could not help myself. It slid out unawares."
"How long have you thought of me only as Iris, your Iris?"
"Ever since I first understood that somewhere in the wide world was a dear woman to love me and be loved."
"But at one time you thought her name was Elizabeth?"
"A delusion, a mirage! That is why those who christened you had the wisdom of the gods."
Another interlude. They grew calmer, more sedate. It was so undeniably true they loved one another that the fact was becoming venerable with age. Iris was perhaps the first to recognize its quiet certainty.