"Jove!" he ejaculated. "It might have been myself. Yet it's strange enough as it is. MacGregor in there was the chap I was to camp with, you remember? The man whose grandmother—"
"Great-grandmother, wasn't it?" she smiled.
"You do remember!"
A silence fell upon them for a little moment and they assayed each other shyly, he keenly aware of the fuller curves which had made a woman of her, she searching rather for reminders of the youth whose image had gone back with her through the gatehouse into bondage. He was more grave, as became a man now looking back upon his golden twenties, with thoughtful lines about the eyes, and a clearer demarcation of the jaw, which was, as of old, shaven, and pale with the pallor of a dweller in cities. The mouth was the mouth of the youth, sensitive, unspoiled; and the direct eyes had lost nothing of their friendliness, though she divined that he weighed her, questioning what manner of woman she had become.
"You went back," he broke the pause, "you went back to that inferno because of what I said. You saw it through. Plucky Jack!"
"Jean," she corrected.
"Why?"
"Jack was another girl, a girl I hope I've outgrown."
"Don't say that," he protested. "I knew her. But this Jean of the staircase—"
"Well?" she challenged, avid for his mature opinion.