"Y-yes. I can't explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously. And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what—what certain people wanted, even if you were the author of Amourette——"
"'To begin,' he said, 'I came here fishing.'"
"I was not what you wanted?" he repeated, bewildered.
"I mean that—that you were not what—what they required——"
"They? Who are they? And what, in Heaven's name, did 'they' require?"
"I don't want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knew immediately that they didn't want you, because you are not up to the University standard. And you won't understand that. I ought to have gone quietly away. . . . I don't know why I didn't. I was so interested in listening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem, Amourette. . . . And two hours slipped by——"
"You stood there in the bushes looking at me for two hours, and listening to my poem—and liking it?"
"Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any apparent reason, I wanted you to see me . . . without any apparent reason . . . and so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I came back . . . without any apparent reason. . . . I don't know what on earth has happened to make me—make me—forget——"
"Forget what?"