"Billy Izzard. Know him?"
"No," said Louie. But she remembered now where she had heard the name.
"Jolly clever painter," said the model authoritatively. "Nice fellow too. Shall I call him?"
"Thanks, but I must be getting on," said Louie. "Good-bye."
"So long. Come and look me up some time, won't you? 25 Edith Grove."
"Thank you. Good-bye."
So that was Roy's friend! They had not gone down with the yacht that had lain under the hill at Rainham Parva. But she had only seen Mr. Izzard's back. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought of Roy; then the sum-total of a long sequence of reveries returned to her again.
Or rather, the factors that made that total returned. In spite of her broodings late at night, when her letters were written and Jimmy's food prepared for the night, she was still unable to cast them up. Had she been asked to state her relation now to Mr. Jeffries her attempt would have been something like this:
"It's perfectly absurd, of course. There is no relation—nothing that can properly be called a relation. How can there be, with a man I don't see—haven't seen since that queer party? I don't even know where he is or what he's doing; he may be a commissionaire again for all I know."
"Yes, but," she now answered herself, as if it had been some form of a dialogue, "don't forget that other night, at Mortlake Road, after Kitty'd gone."