"Oh yes," said Evie, looking straight in front of her.
"Have you seen her, then?"
"Oh no. But of course Mr. Jeffries himself would know, wouldn't he?—that is, if you call it breaking off when a person just disappears without saying where she is or anything about it. Don't bother to unbutton; I have some pennies——"
But Louie also had pennies. "Any more fares?" the conductor called, and then went downstairs again. The two women fell into a silence. The early lamplight came and went on their faces as the bus jogged on.
Presently the silence seemed to have taken almost the character of a contest as to who should speak next, with either resolved that it should not be herself. Louie knew perfectly well what was the matter. Miss Soames might speak glancingly of Mortlake Road and offer to pay her bus fares, but really she hated Louie because of Louie's discovery in the old ledger-room on that examination day that now seemed so long ago. The girl seemed to be still in some sort of half mourning—but Louie did not want to think much of that and all that it might mean. Rather desperately, she strove to forget that she had ever had a theory about what might have driven Evie Soames into black and of what might happen when she went into colours again. She must, she told herself sharply, have a hideous mind ever to have thought these things. Indeed, she was so short with herself about it that, relinquishing the contest of silence, she again made the small immediate thing banish the large shadowy one behind.
"Do you ever see Miriam Levey nowadays?" she asked suddenly.
"No," Evie replied. At any rate she had not been the first to speak.
"Oh? But aren't she and Mr. Jeffries at the same place now?"
"Yes, I believe they are—in fact, I know they are. I suppose Kitty told you?"
"Yes."