“Yes!” Mills’ thoughts were still dwelling in the past. “And when saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand—as she did to me—it was as if across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out? Perhaps she’s really one of those inaccessible beings. What do you think, Blunt?” It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather disturbed me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he turned to me. “That thick man,” he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, “is as fine as a needle. All these statements about the seduction and then this final doubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included more than six hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it is Henry Allègre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills.” “I haven’t the secret of raising the dead,” answered Mills good humouredly. “And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life.” “And yet Henry Allègre is the only person to ask about her, after all this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he discovered her; all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very last breath. I don’t mean to say she nursed him. He had his confidential man for that. He couldn’t bear women about his person. But then apparently he couldn’t bear this one out of his sight. She’s the only woman who ever sat to him, for he would never suffer a model inside his house. That’s why the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and the ‘Byzantine Empress’ have that family air, though neither of them is really a likeness of Doña Rita. . . You know my mother?” Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from his lips. Blunt’s eyes were fastened on the very centre of his empty plate. “Then perhaps you know my mother’s artistic and literary associations,” Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. “My mother has been writing verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She’s still writing verse. She’s still fifteen—a spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one of her poet friends—no less than Versoy himself—to arrange for a visit to Henry Allègre’s house. At first he thought he hadn’t heard aright. You must know that for my mother a man that doesn’t jump out of his skin for any woman’s caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . .” Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his eyes from his plate to look at him, started afresh with great deliberation.