"No, Mrs. Wordling."
"Don't you think you are rather careless with your friends?" she asked, as one whom the earth had made much to mourn. "It is true, I haven't been here many times for dinner (there have been so many invitations), but breakfasts and luncheons—always I have peeked into the farthest corners hoping to see you—before I sat down alone."
"I have missed a great deal, but it's good to be thought of," he said.
"You didn't mean, then, to be careless with your friends?"
"No."
"I thought you were avoiding me."
"If there were people here to be avoided, I'm afraid I shouldn't stay."
"But supposing you liked the place very much, and there was just one whom you wished to avoid——"
He laughed. "I give it up. I might stay—but I don't avoid—certainly not one of my first friends in New York——"
"Yes, I was a member of the original company, when David Cairns' Sailor-Friend was produced…. How different you seem from that night!" she added confidentially. "How is it you make people believe you so? You have been a great puzzle to me—to us. I supposed at first you were just a breezy individual, whom David Cairns (who is a very brilliant man) had found an interesting type——"