"Oh, Louis, how wicked of you! You might have died!"
"No such luck."
"For shame! I've been ill too; did you know? Of course you didn't, or else you'd have come to ask how I was, wouldn't you? No, you wouldn't. How could you come when you were ill?"
"I would have come. I didn't know."
"Didn't you? Oh, well—we had a fire here, and I was burnt; that's all. How funny you not knowing, though. It was in all the papers—'Heroic conduct of a lady.' Aren't they silly, those people that write papers. I wasn't heroic a bit."
"I—I never saw it. I was in Paris."
"In Paris? Ah, I love Paris! That's where I went for my honeymoon. Was that where you were ill?"
"Yes."
"Poor Louis! And I was so happy there."
Poor Louis!—she had loved Nevill in him and he was still a part of Nevill. And for the rest, she who understood so much, who was she to judge him?