"No, no, no," she replied, "why should you hurry? I'm sure those two freaks you're herding—the beetle turned hind-side before and the withered leaf—can't be frantically interesting. And I like to look at you. I never saw you before in evening dress, and you're more grand seigneur than ever. But something's happened to you. I can't tell off-hand what it is, whether you've come on or gone back. But you're altered."
"I have had an illness," Iglesias said simply; "and I have been very unhappy."
"Neither of those are good enough," Poppy answered. "The alteration is right inside you, in your soul. But you're well again now?" she added.
"Yes, I am well again now."
"And you're no longer unhappy?"
"No," he said. "I am sad, for life is sad; but I am no longer unhappy."
"That's a nice distinction," Poppy put in, with a rather scornful inflection. "What's cured your unhappiness? Not an affair of the heart? Please don't tell me it's anything to do with a woman, for I warn you I'm awfully off the affections to-night."
"You can make yourself quite easy on that point," Dominic said with a lift of the head, his native pride asserting itself.
"Ah! that's more like old times!" Poppy's voice softened again, so did the expression of her face. "Suppose you sit down, dear lunatic. This wait is a long one, I know. Dot Parris told me it was. Let the freaks play about together for a little. It will do them good. And I find I wanted you rather more than I knew at first. I'm beginning to have something to say after all. Words, only words, perhaps; still it's a soulagement to sit here with you like this." The corners of Poppy's mouth drooped and quivered. "I'm having an infernally bad time; and there's worse ahead."
"I am sorry. I am grieved," Iglesias said. For the charm had begun to work again, and friendship, as he began to know, although broken-winged, was very far from dead.