He said that he would go in to dinner with us just as he was. He was welcomed by everybody, and, of course, Mrs. Carney introduced him to me. She could have had no better answer to what he had just said to her. "May I present my husband, Miss Wakely?" she said. "Arthur, she was once at the factory. You may remember----" He had grown stouter, and his face was pink, and his head was pink through his light hair. He carried a glass and stared at me through it, and then he dropped his glass and said: "My word, you know. Then we've met before, we two." "I've never had the pleasure of really meeting you, Mr. Carney," I said. "You parted from me anyway. I remember that," he said. And presently he came back to where I was. "Here's my partner, please, madame," he said to Mrs. Carney. So I sat beside him. Of course I wasn't afraid of him any more and I wasn't really annoyed by him. I could just study him now. And I thought: "If only every girl whom a man follows, as you followed me, could just study him--like a specimen." "That was a devilish clever trick you played on me, you know," he said, when we were seated. "How'd you come to think of it?" I said: "That was easy. I could think of it again." "You could, could you?" said he. "Well, what I want to know is what you're doing here?" "Mrs. Carney must tell you that," I reminded him. He stared at me. "You're a cool one," he said. "Come, aren't you going to tell me something about yourself? Why, I must be just about the first friend you had in this little old town." I had been wondering if I dare say some of all that was in my mind, and I concluded that I did dare--rather than hear all that was in his. So I said: "Mr. Carney, you have been asking me some questions. Now I wonder if I may ask you some?" "Sure," he said. "Come ahead. I'd be flattered to get even that much interest out of you." "It's something I've thought a good deal about," I told him, "and hardly anybody can ever have asked about it, first hand. But you must know, and you could tell me." "I'll tell you anything you want to know," he said. "Even how much I still think of you." It was hard to keep my temper, but I did, because I really wanted to know. Every woman must want to know, who's been through it. "I wish you'd tell me," I said, "just how a man figures everything out for himself, when he begins to hunt down a girl--as you hunted me?" He stared again, and then he burst out laughing. "Bless you," he said, "he doesn't figure. He just feels." "But now, think," I urged. "After all, you have brains--" "Many, many thanks, little one," he said. "--and sometimes you must use them. In those days, didn't you honestly care what became of me? Didn't you think about that at all?" "You can bet I did," he said. "Didn't I make it fairly clear what I wanted to become of you?" I wondered whether I could go on. But I felt as if I must--because here was something that is one of the big puzzles of the world.