“Why nowadays?”
“Oh, because our ideas of good are so much more merciful and our ideas of girls are so much more––complicated. Anyway, as the fellow said, that’s my story. And now you know all about Mamise that I know. Can you forgive her for wearing your name?”
“I could forgive that Mamise anything,” she sighed. “But this Mamise I can’t forgive at all.”
This puzzled him. “I don’t quite get that.”
She let him simmer in his own perplexity through a furlong of what helpless writers call “a shady dell”; its tenderness won from him a timid confession.
“You reminded me of her when I first met you. You are as different as can be, and yet somehow you remind me of each other.”
“Somehow we are each other.”
He leaned forward and stared at her, and she spared him a hasty glance from the road. She was blushing.
He was so childishly happy that he nearly said, “It’s a small world, after all.” He nearly swung to the other extreme. “Well, I’ll be––” He settled like a dying pendulum on, “Well––well!” They both laughed, and he put out his hand. “Pleased to meet you again.”
She let go the wheel and pressed his hand an instant.