She flushed uncomfortably.
"Yes, I--I suppose so," she faltered.
He seemed to understand.
"Forgive me," he said, with a sudden gentleness.

"I wasn't laughing at you, but only at all the absurd conventions by which we cut ourselves off from many an hour of pleasant intercourse--just as though we had any too many pleasures in life! But if you wish it, I'll go back to my corner." "No, no, don't go," returned Diana hastily.

"It--it was silly of me." "Then we may talk?
Good.

I shall behave quite nicely, I assure you." Again the curiously familiar quality in his voice! She was positive she had heard it before--that crisp, unslurred enunciation, with its keen perception of syllabic values, so unlike the average Englishman's slovenly rendering of his mother-tongue.
"Of what are you thinking ?" he asked, smiling.

And then the swift, hawk-like glance of the blue eyes brought with it a sudden, sure sense of recognition, stinging the slumbering cells of memory into activity.