“It’s no use asking me,” she said to Mauregard, “whether I’ve been to Monte Carlo or Madagascar or Madame Tussaud’s, for I haven’t. I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve somehow existed at the back of Nowhere, and to-night I’ve come to life.”
“But where did you come from? The sea foam? Venus Anadyomene?”
“No, I’m of the other kind. I come from far inland. I believe they call it Shropshire. That oughtn’t to convey anything to you.”
“Indeed it does!” cried Mauregard. “Was I not at school at Shrewsbury?”
“No?”
“But yes. Three years. So I’m Shropshire, too.”
“That’s delightful,” she remarked; “but it does away with my little mystery of Nowhere.”
“No, no,” he protested, with a laugh. He was a fair, bright-eyed boy with a little curled-up moustache which gave him the air of a cherub playfully disguised. “It is the county of mystery. Doesn’t your poet say:
‘Once in the wind of morning
I ranged the thymy wold;