"Do you really think so?" she asked.
"I do; I can almost answer for it. You see, the Caranay has been my haunt for many years, and I know almost to a certainty what is likely to happen here."
"That is jolly!" she exclaimed, greatly relieved. "Helen, I really think we should be starting——"
But Helen, pencil poised, gazed obdurately at Ellis out of brown eyes which were scarcely fashioned for such impartial and inexorable work.
"If your name is not Smith I should be very glad to note it," she said.
So he laughed and told her who he was and where he lived; and she wrote it down, somewhat shakily.
"Of course," she said, "you cannot be the artist—James Lowell Ellis, the artist—the great——"
She hesitated; brown eyes and grey eyes, very wide now, were concentrated on him. Jones, too, stared, and Ellis laughed.
"Are you?" blurted out Jones. "Great Heaven! I never supposed——"