She was silent, looking gravely out to sea and the scarcely visible line of the Esterel Mountains.
“You mustn’t resent my quickness in guessing!” he continued. “I can always put two and two together and make four! Our podgy friend has been unconsciously a very good test of the change in you.”
She turned her head and looked fixedly at him.
“Yes. Of the outward change. But of the inward, even you know nothing!”
“Do I not? And will you not tell me?”
She smiled strangely.
“It will be difficult. But as your ‘subject’ I suppose I am bound to tell——”
He made a slight, deprecatory gesture.
“Not unless you wish.”
“I have no wishes,” she replied. “The matter is, like everything else, quite indifferent to me. You have guessed rightly as to the causes of my coming to you—my father and mother were much disappointed at my losing all my ‘chances’ as the world puts it, and failing to establish myself in a respectable married position—I was a drag on their wheel, though they are both quite old people,—so I relieved them of my presence in the only way I could think of to make them sure they were rid of me for ever. Then—on the faith of your advertisement I came to you. You know all the rest—and you also know that the ‘experiment’ for which you wanted ‘a woman of mature years’ is—so far—successful. But——”