"You know nothing at all about me."
"Oh, yes, I know you very well indeed. I knew you before you came here. You showed me yourself in your letters. You are exactly like the portrait I drew of you. I never thought, for instance, that you were an old gentleman, as you thought me." He laughed. It was a new thing to see Iris using, even gently, the dainty weapons of satire.
"But you do not know what I am, or what is my profession, or anything at all about me."
"No; I do not care to know. All that is not part of yourself. It is outside you."
"And because you thought you knew me from those letters, you suffer me to come here and be your disciple still? Yet you gave me back my letters?"
"That was because they were written to me under a wrong impression."
"Will you have them back again?"
She shook her head.
"I know them all by heart," she said simply.
There was not the slightest sign of coquetry or flattery in her voice, or in her eyes, which met his look with clear and steady gaze.