The effort of recollection dimmed Hal's face. "Wait! I'm beginning to see. The light of the torches across the square, and the man with the knife.—Then darkness.—was unconscious, wasn't I?—Then the fairy child with the soft eyes, looking down at me. Little girl, little girl, it was you! That is why I seemed to remember, that day at the station, before I knew you."
"Yes," she said, smiling up at him.
"How wonderful! And you remembered. How more than wonderful!"
"Yes, I remembered." It was no part of her plan—quite relentless, now—to tell him that her uncle had recounted to her the events of that far-distant night, and that she had been holding them in reserve for some hitherto undetermined purpose of coquetry. So she spoke the lie without a tremor. What he would say next, she almost knew. Nor did he disappoint her expectation.
"And so you've come back into my life after all these years!"
"You haven't taken back your proof." She slipped it into his hand. "What have you done with my subscription-flower?"
"The arbutus? It stands always on my desk."
"Do you see the rest of it anywhere?"
Her eyes rested on a tiny vase set in a hanging window-box of flowers, and holding a brown and withered wisp. "I tend those flowers myself," she continued. "And I leave the dead arbutus there to remind me of the responsibilities of journalism—and of the hold I have over the incorruptible editor."
"Does it weigh upon you?" He answered the tender laughter in her eyes.