Self-possession was one of Jimmy’s leading characteristics, but for the moment he found himself speechless. This girl had been occupying his thoughts for so long that—in his mind—he had grown very intimate with her. It was something of a shock to come suddenly out of his dreams and face the fact that she was in reality practically a stranger. He felt as one might with a friend whose memory has been wiped out. It went against the grain to have to begin again from the beginning after all the time they had been together.
A curious constraint fell upon him.
“Why, how do you do, Mr. Pitt?” she said, holding out her hand.
Jimmy began to feel better. It was something that she remembered his name.
“It’s like meeting somebody out of a dream,” said Molly. “I have sometimes wondered if you were real. Everything that happened that night was so like a dream.”
Jimmy found his tongue.
“You haven’t altered,” he said; “you look just the same.”
“Well,” she laughed, “after all, it’s not so long ago, is it?”
He was conscious of a dull hurt. To him it had seemed years. But he was nothing to her—just an acquaintance, one of a hundred. But what more, he asked himself, could he have expected? And with the thought came consolation. The painful sense of having lost ground left him. He saw he had been allowing things to get out of proportion. He had not lost ground. He had gained it. He had met her again and she remembered him. What more had he any right to ask?
“I’ve crammed a good deal into the time,” he explained. “I’ve been travelling about a bit since we met.”