"Then I'm perfectly happy and contented—or I will be when you read that letter and admit I'm not as much of a piker as I seemed."
She laughed and coloured: "I never thought that of you. I only—missed you."
"Really?"
"Yes," she said innocently.
For a second he looked rather grave, then again, conscious of his own constraint, spoke gaily, lightly:
"You certainly are the real thing in friendship. You are far too generous to me."
She said: "Incidents are not frequent enough in my life to leave me unimpressed. I never knew any other boy of your sort. I suppose that is why I never forgot you."
Her simplicity pricked the iridescent and growing bubble of his vanity, and he laughed, discountenanced by her direct explanation of how memory chanced to retain him. But it did not occur to him to ask himself how it happened that, in all these years, and in a life so happily varied, so delightfully crowded as his own had always been, he had never entirely forgotten her.
"I wish you'd open that letter and read it," he said. "It's my credential. Date and postmark plead for me."