"That contaminating scarecrow, as you are pleased to call her, is the best friend I have in the world. I need no other."
"And I," he said harshly, "have no friend in this world, and need you."
"Then," said I, "you have lost your opportunity. Do you suppose I am a child—to be insulted and domineered over only because I am alone? Possibly," and my lips so trembled that I could hardly frame the words, "it is your face I shall see when I think of those windows."
I was speaking wiselier than I knew. He turned sharply, and by a play of light it seemed that at one of them there stood looking down on us out of the distance a shape that so had watched for ever, leering darkly out of the void. And there awoke in me the sense of this stranger's extremity of solitude, of his unhappy disguise, of his animal-like patience.
"Why," I said, "Mrs Bowater! You might far rather be thanking her for—for——"
"Curses on her," he choked, turning away. "There was everything to tell you."
"What everything?"
"Call her back now," he muttered furiously.
"That," I said smoothly, "is easily done. But, forgive me, I don't know your name."