Her shoulders moved in a little deprecatory gesture.
“It’s just my way—that’s all.”
He continued to hold her hand, looking at her as though he were straining his eyes to distinguish some object in the fog. She did not attempt to draw her hand away, as most women would, rather taken with this brusqueness and assumption that was, at heart, unconscious.
“Something restful about you—your voice, and the touch of your hand,” he said, as though to himself. “I remember now—that night. I thought it was an hallucination. Yes; I remember you now, quite distinctly—and the sound of your voice.” He added abruptly: “You haven’t told me your name.”
“Inga Sonderson.”
He repeated it.
“Really? Sounds like the sea rolling in—curious name. You’re not American?”
“I was born here.”
“Shouldn’t have thought it.”
At this moment a door opened down the hall, and, recalled to himself, he frowned, looked down, seemed suddenly to perceive that her firm, slender hand lay in his huge spreading one, and said hastily: