He knitted his brows. Frida had proved a little disconcerting at times. He had had to begin all over again with her, aware that, though ostensibly renewing their old acquaintance, he was actually making a new one, to which faint recognitions and perishing reminiscences gave a bewildering, elusive charm. But Frida remembered many things that he had forgotten, and a certain directness and familiarity born of this superior memory of hers puzzled him and put him out. This time, however, he had a dreamy recollection. "Fancy your remembering that!" "I remember everything. At any rate, I remember quite enough to see that you're just the same; you haven't changed a little bit. Except that you don't look as you did the first night I met you." "And how did I look then?" She paused, carefully selecting her phrase. "You looked--as if--I'd given you a shock. You had expected something different. That dream did _not_ tally with the reality." "How on earth----" "How on earth did I know? You may not be aware of it, but you have a very expressive face." "I was not aware of it." Poor Durant. His face was expressive enough now in all conscience. She held out her hand and laid it on his sleeve, and he remembered how she used to shrink from his touch. "My dear Mr. Durant, don't look like that; it makes my heart bleed. Of course I saw it. I saw everything. I saw your face looking over the banisters as I was going downstairs, when I've no doubt you thought you'd caught sight of a very pretty woman; and I saw it with a very different expression on it when you shook hands and found that the woman wasn't a bit pretty, after all. Of course it was a shock to you, and of course I understood. I knew so exactly how you felt, and I was so sincerely sorry for you." "Sorry! I have a distinct recollection of being abominably rude to you that night, and unpleasant afterward. Can you, will you forgive me?" "What? Five years after the offense? No. I forgave you at the time; I'm not going to do it all over again. What does it matter? It's all so long ago. The funny part of it was that I wasn't a bit annoyed with you, but I was furious with--whom do you think?" "I haven't a notion if it wasn't with me." "It was a she--the other lady, the woman I wasn't, the woman you thought I was, my ideal self. Needless to say, my feminine jealousy was such that I could have throttled her. I suppose I did pretty well do for her as it happened. There can be nothing deader than a dead idea." "Don't be too sure. I have known them come to life again."