"Yet you thought so! You're not a man who can lie well. And you are the cousin of Claremanagh's wife. You thought badly of me." "I'd no right to think badly," Jack staved her off. "It wasn't my affair!" "I asked you here to-night to _make_ it your affair." Jack had a shock of disappointment. That wonderful, heart-piercing first look of hers which he had read, "You are _the_ man: I am _the_ woman!" hadn't meant much after all. "You see," Lyda went on, "I think that perhaps you and I have known each other a long time: in another life: perhaps in more lives than one. Souls that have been friends--or more than friends--group together on earth many times, no doubt. Did you feel this when we met to-night?" "Yes!" Jack said, his breath choked. "I know it must have been that. I knew even then it was the most wonderful thing ever!" "_I_ felt it even yesterday, when I passed you at Claremanagh's door," she told him. "I thought: 'There's a man I may never see again, but we could be friends, and we _have_ been friends, though maybe he has forgotten.' When I was in the study behind the curtains--Claremanagh put me there: he didn't want me seen--I was sorry you should believe things not true." "I did not!" Jack protested. "No? Then--I am glad." The man felt ashamed, remembering suddenly what he _had_ believed yesterday--even to-day. Her words, "I am glad," cut him to the quick, and he hurried on along the way of atonement. "You say you asked me here to 'make it my affair'--about Claremanagh. Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it." "I don't know yet what is best. We will talk it over," she answered. "But first you will have to hear a story. It's a long story: how I met Claremanagh, and a great many things that came of the meeting. You won't be bored?" "Do you need an answer to that question?" Lyda gave him one of her rare smiles. "No. It was conventional of me to ask. But--it will not be conventional to tell you the story. It would be--even _dangerous_ to tell it to some men. I'm not afraid with you." "Thank you for saying that!" She held out her hand to him across the small round table. Jack seized it, and pressed it closely instead of kissing the pink palm as he was tempted to do. For a moment Lyda sat still, her eyes cast down, as if she sought for words which eluded her. Then she began in a low voice that was slightly monotonous, as though she spoke out of an old dream. She paused sometimes; but Manners remained silent, asking no questions. He felt that she would prefer this.