And confused with this recognition of him was the alarm that she always felt when her early life returned to her. Also she was young enough to be pleased at the agitation into which her coming had thrown him. It meant, plainly, so much to him; although he was silent he leant forward in his chair, with his eyes fixed upon her, waiting for his opportunity. Miss Rand, watching him, saw how tremendously this meeting with one of the family excited him, and, seeing him, her heart filled with pity. "He's so young. It is hard. He does want someone to look after him." Rachel's happiness had, now, returned to her. She liked them all so much, it was all so cosy, it was so good of them to wish to see her. She talked with Mrs. Rand about the theatre and the opera. "We're going to the opera to-night--the _Meistersinger_. I've heard it in Munich twice, but never with Van Rooy, who's singing to-night. I believe that's an experience one never forgets----" Mrs. Rand did not really care about opera; everything in opera happened so slowly, except in _Carmen_, and even that was better simply as a play. She liked musical comedy because there you could laugh, or plays like _The Mikado_, for instance. She was vague as to the _Meistersinger_ and she had never heard of Van Rooy, but she said, "I agree with you, Miss Beaminster. There's nobody like him." At that Breton struck in with something about music that he had heard in strange places abroad, and then Rachel, looking in his face for the first time, asked him about his travels. As their eyes and voices met she was again overwhelmed with the vivid consciousness of their earlier meeting. She thought, "If I were to ask him whether he remembered that same snow and silence he would say yes--I know he would say yes." Miss Rand, with eyes that were kind but very, very sharp, watched them. She noticed the eagerness of Breton and wished that he did not seem quite so anxious to please. "But that's because he's young," she thought again. And, now that he had begun, the words poured from him. With gesticulation that was faintly foreign, ever so little dramatic, he unpacked his adventures. He spoke as though this were, beyond all time, _the_ moment when he must make his effect. He did it well, a born teller of tales. And yet Miss Rand wished that he had not had to do it at all, that there had been more reserve, less drama, less volubility. Mrs. Rand, an older Desdemona, listened spellbound. This was as good as getting a circulating library without paying a subscription. As she said to her daughter afterwards: "He really was as good as those novels by what's his name--you know who I mean--those delightful stories about those foreign places--and the sea."