"Is that you, Miss Cartaret? Good!"
He grasped her hand. He behaved exactly as if he had expected her. He never even wondered what she had come for. She might have come to say that her father or one of her sisters was dying, and would he go at once; but none of these possibilities occurred to him.
He didn't want to account for her coming to him. It was natural and beautiful that she should come.
Then, as she stepped into the lighted passage, he saw that she was bareheaded and that her eyelashes were parted and gathered into little wet points.
He took her arm gently and led her into his study and shut the door.
They faced each other there.
"I say—is anything wrong?"
"I thought you were ill."
She hadn't grasped the absurdity of it yet. She was still under the spell of the illusion.
"I? Ill? Good heavens, no!"
"They told me in the village you'd got diphtheria. And I came to know if it was true. It isn't true?"