"Absurd!" she said.
"It's true. After you'd gone back to your office, I went for a long walk, but all the time, I was thinking of you, and I hurried back to the shop at teatime, hoping I'd see you. And you were there, looking lovelier than you looked in the middle of the day. Do you remember?"
"Yes," she said. "You looked so ridiculous!..."
"Perhaps I did, but I didn't care how I looked so long as I was near you. I felt miserable and lonely, and you were the only person in London I knew!..."
"But you didn't know me!" she insisted.
"I knew your name, and I was in love with you. That was enough. I tried to speak to you, but you would not let me. I asked you to be friends with me, and you got up and walked away. I felt ashamed of myself because I thought I had frightened you, and I hurried out of the shop and followed you so that I might tell you how sorry I was and how much I loved you, but I lost you at your office, and the man at the lift nearly had a fight with me!..."
"Then it was you who had been asking for me? He told me that a suspicious character had been hanging about the hall, enquiring for me. I thought it might be you!"
"I don't look suspicious, do I?"
"You behave suspiciously. You speak to people whom you do not know, and you follow them in the street!..."
"Only you, Eleanor. Not anybody else!"