He hadn’t imagined such familiar closeness with a woman really unknown, nor that, sweeping away all the formalities that might have grown up between them, she should call him Gavan and make it natural for him to call her Eppie. He didn’t really mind. It was amusing, charming perhaps, perhaps even touching--yes, of course it was that; but she was rather out of place: much nearer than where he had imagined she would be, on the stage before him. Passing to another memory, she now said, “I clung for years, you know, to your promise to come back.” “I couldn’t come--really and simply could not.” “I never for a moment thought you could, any more than I thought you could forget Robbie.” “And when I could come, you were gone.” “How miserable that made me! I was in Rome when I had the news from Uncle Nigel.” He felt bound fully to exonerate the past. “I had the life, during my boyhood, of a sumptuous galley-slave. I had everything except liberty and leisure. I was put into a system and left there until it had had its will of me. And when I was free I imagined that you had forgotten all about me. To a shy, warped boy, a grown-up Eppie was an alarming idea.” “I never thought you had forgotten _me_!” said Eppie, smiling. Again she actually disturbed him; but, lightly, he replied with the truth, feeling a certain satisfaction in its lightness: “Never, never; though, of course, you fell into a background. You can’t deny that _I_ did.” “Oh, no, I don’t deny it.” Her smile met his, seemed placidly to perceive its meaning. She did not for a moment imply, by her admissions, any more than he did; the only question was, What did his admissions imply? She left them there, going on in an apparent sequence, “Have you heard much about me, Gavan?” “A good deal,” he owned. “I ask because I want to pick up threads; I want to know how many stitches are dropped, so to speak. Since you have heard, I want to know just what; I often seem to leave reverberations behind me. Some rather ugly ones, I fear. You heard, perhaps, that I was that rather ambiguous being, the young woman of fashion, materialistic, ambitious, hard.” Her gaze, with its cool scrutiny, was now upon him. “Those are really too ugly names for what I heard. I gathered, on the whole, that you were merely very vigorous and that you had more opportunities than most people for vigor.”