"Have you acquired one?"
She laughed, too, then glanced at him askance in the glass, and turned around toward him, still smiling.
"I believe I didn't have any heart when I first knew you. Did I?"
"I believe not," he said lightly. "Has one germinated?"
"I really don't know. What do you think?"
He took her cigarette from her and tossed it, with his own, into the fire. She seated herself on a sofa and bent toward the blaze, her dimpled elbows denting her silken knees, her chin balanced between forefinger and thumb.
Presently she said, not looking at him: "Somehow, I've changed. I'm not the woman you knew. I'm beginning to realise it. It seems absurd: it was only a few weeks ago. But the world has whirled very swiftly. Each day was a little lifetime in itself; a week a century condensed; Time became only a concentrated essence, one drop of which contained eons of experience.... I wonder whether my silly head was turned a little.... People said too much to me: there were too many of them—and they came too near.... And do you know—looking back at it now as I sit here talking to you—I—it seems absurd—but I believe that I was really a trifle lonely at times."
She interlaced her fingers and rested her chin on the back of them.
"I thought of you on various occasions," she added.
He was leaning against the mantel, one foot on the fender.