For a second or two she could not place him. Then she laughed.
“Why—Major Olifant!” She shook hands. “What are you doing here? I thought you were buried among your fossils. Do tell me—how are the hot-water pipes? And how is the parrot? Myra has no faith in your bachelor housekeeping and is sure you’ve eaten him out of desperation.”
He returned a light answer. Then, touching the arm of a man standing by his side:
“Miss Gale—can I introduce Mr. Alexis Triona.”
Triona bowed, stood uncovered while he took the hand which Olivia held out.
“This is my landlady,” said Olifant.
“He is privileged beyond the common run of mortals,” said Triona.
“That’s very pretty,” laughed Olivia, with a swift, enveloping glance at the slight, inconspicuous youth who had done such wonderful things. “I’ve not thought of myself as a landlady before. I hope I don’t look like one.”
Visions of myriad Bloomsbury lodging-houses at whose doors he had knocked after he had left the tiny room in Cherbury Mews, and of the strange middle-aged women of faded gentility whom he had interviewed within those doors, rose before Triona’s eyes, and he laughed too. For under the strong electric light of the portico, unkind to most of the other waiting women, showing up lines and hollows and artificialities of complexion, she looked as fresh and young as a child on a May morning. The open theatre wrap revealed her slender girlish figure, sketchily clad in a flame-coloured garment; and, with the light in her eyes and her little dark head proudly poised, she stood before the man’s fancy as the flame of youth.
She turned to Olifant.