"'Why, of course, you are going to stay!' she said, surprised into a decisive manner. 'I'm just trying to explain.... Do sit down, please!' We both sat down. She took a deep breath: "'Mother said she wasn't at home at first, because she is lying down with a headache and a bad temper. But then she changed her mind--even a headache can't ever prevent mother from changing her mind--and said that she couldn't turn you away from the door the very first time you called, as you might never come again, which--' "'Yes, I would,' I interrupted. "'But you wouldn't dare contradict mother like that if she were here,' she retorted; and then covered her suddenly heightened flush with a little tremor of a laugh. It wasn't quite a laugh--rather like a happy gurgle, you know, if that doesn't sound too stupid. And it made one want to smile all over. "'Shall I go on where I left off when you interrupted?... Which, said mother, would be a pity, because you were a nice young man and had quite good manners for a man who couldn't help having gone to Oxford or Cambridge--' "'Heidelberg,' I corrected softly. "'Well, I'm glad mother doesn't know that, because she generally doesn't like eccentric people.... And then she told me to come down and receive you, and give you tea, and make such a fuss of you that you'd have to pretend to be amused, anyway.' "I suppose she caught me with a whole-hearted smile all over my face, because she added, 'And you are pretending splendidly,' in a shy, mischievous way. Then again that tremor of a laugh, with just a little mocking wave in it. And now, too, laughter was playing a fluttering game with the inevitable shyness in the tortoiseshell eyes. Yes, they were just brown eyes when she first came in, but now they were tortoiseshell in the pale October light. These things happen. "It was rash of me to begin to try and tell you about Fay Richmond, because I find I am groping for the threads. And there is something almost irritating in trying to modulate one's thoughts to the facts of an intimacy which has been at the back of one's mind for so many years, but which only lasted twelve months. That's all--just about twelve months from that afternoon which I've been describing to you at such terrible length; on purpose, indeed, because in groping to fit a memory with a face and a voice I have got to go back to the very beginning, to re-live that first impression of that first meeting; which ended only with a suddenly returned nervousness, itself the herald of my returning formality. As I took my leave I had the happy feeling that I had found a friend--you know that feeling? as you walk away from a house which you had entered never dreaming of the unusual smile with which you would be leaving it? It happens so seldom....