Philip silently watched her, and was again conscious of the peace her mere presence brought him. She was wearing a crimson wrapper, and her black hair, which had been braided in a long thick plait for the night, hung far below her waist.
At last he spoke. He spoke as a man speaks who dreams.
“I never saw Eweretta’s hair down,” he said. “She, too, had beautiful black hair like you. I think it must have been very long.”
The girl kept her back towards him as she fingered something on the sideboard.
“Yes, it was very long,” she answered.
“Lots of things in you remind me of her, besides your looks,” went on Philip. “Your voice is hers, and you have her trick of passing your hand across your forehead. But you are very different from her, nevertheless. She was always laughing. Do you ever laugh, Miss Le Breton? I don’t think I have once heard you laugh. But you smile more than she did, and differently.”
“I am as you say, very different from Eweretta—from Eweretta, as you knew her,” she answered. “But I think we will not talk of her just now.”
“Miss Le Breton,” he broke out, “do you know my book—the book you did not like—is destroyed, and that I don’t think I am sorry?”
“Yet you said you put your heart into it,” she reminded him.
“I don’t think I knew,” he answered vaguely. “Not then. I have worked a lot on that book since I read some chapters to you, and I think I must have seen it with your eyes. I got not to like it.”