For she was startled, too. It _was_ he. She remembered, as if she had seen them yesterday, his air of quick response, surface-shrinking, deep composure, the old delicious smile, and the glance swiftly looking and swiftly averted. “And _you_,” Gavan repeated. “I haven’t changed so much, though,” he said. “And I have? Really much? Long skirts and turned up hair are a transformation. It’s wonderful to see you, Gavan. It makes one get hold of the past and of oneself in it.” “Does it?” “_Doesn’t_ it?” She let go his hands, and moving to the fire and standing before it while she surveyed him, she went on, not waiting for an answer: “But I don’t suppose that you have my keenness of memory. It all rushes back--our walks, our games, our lessons, the smell of the heather, the very taste of the heather-honey we ate at tea, and all the things you did and said and looked; your building the Petit Trianon, and your playing dolls with me that day; your Agnes, in her pink dress, and my Elspeth, whom I used to whip so.” “I remember it all,” said Gavan, “and I remember how I broke poor Elspeth.” “Do you?” “All of it: the attic windows and the pine-tree under them, and the great white bird, and the dreadful, soft little thud on the garden path.” “Yes, I can see your face looking down. You were quite silent and frozen. I screamed and screamed. Aunt Barbara thought that _you_ had fallen at first from the way I screamed.” “Poor little Eppie. Yes, I remember; it was horrid.” Their eyes, smiling, quizzical, yet sad, watched, measured each other, while they exchanged these trophies from the past. He had joined her beside the fire, and, turning, she leaned her hands on the mantel and looked into the flames. So looking, her face had its aspect of almost tragic brooding. It was as if, Gavan thought, under the light memories, all those visions of his night were there before her, as if, astonishingly, and in almost uncanny measure, she shared them. “And do you remember Robbie?” she asked presently. “I was just thinking of Robbie,” Gavan answered. It was her face that had brought back the old sorrow, and that memory, more than any, linked them over all that was new and strange. They glanced at each other. “I am so glad,” said Eppie. “Because I remember?” “Yes, that you haven’t forgotten. You said you would.” “Did I?” he asked, though he quite remembered that, too. “Yes; and I should have felt Robbie more dead if you had forgotten him.” This was wonderfully not the Miss Gifford, and wonderfully the old Eppie. She saw that thought, too, answering it with, “Things haven’t really changed so much, have they? It’s all so very near--all of that.” So near, that its sudden sharing was making Gavan a little uncomfortable, with the discomfort of the night before justified, intensified.