“_Good_-by, and I assure you that even if I shall never be able to think of you in the future except as all wrapped up in the middle of those absurd towels, I shall think of you quite kindly though rather ridiculously nevertheless. And now if you will just run away a minute and wait down in that car of Sargent's that Oliver--borrowed--so effectively--because I must have one motherly word with Oliver alone before we part forever! Thank you so _much_! _Good_-by!” XLIII So Oliver was left alone with her, he didn't know why. He noticed, however, that when she came to talk to him, though it was still with lightness, she was at no particular effort any longer to make the lightness anything but a method of dealing with wounds. “Mr. Billett does not seem quite to appreciate exactly how much your timely pugilistics did for him,” she observed. “Or exactly how they might have affected you.” Oliver set his jaw, rather. He was hardly going to discuss what Ted might or might not owe him with Mrs. Severance. Hardly. “No, I suppose you wouldn't,” she said uncannily. Then she spoke again and this time if the tone was airy it was with the airiness of a defeated swordsman apologizing for having been killed by such a clumsy stroke of fence. “But I have some--comprehension--of just what you did. And besides--I seem to have a queer foible for telling the truth just now. Odd, isn't it, when I've been lying so successfully all evening?” “Very successfully,” said Oliver, and, to his astonishment, saw her wince. “Yes--well. Well, I don't know quite why I'm keeping you here--though there was something I wanted to say to you, I believe--in a most serious and grandmotherly manner too--the way of a grown woman as Sargent would put it--poor Sargent--” She laughed. “Oh yes, I remember now. It was only that I don't think you need--worry--about Mr. Billett any more. You see?” “I think so,” said Oliver with some incomprehension. “Seeing him done up that way in towels,” she mused with a flicker of mirth. “And the way he looked at me when I was telling about things afterwards--oh it wouldn't do, you know, Oliver, it wouldn't do! Your friend is--essentially--a--highly--Puritan--young man,” she added slowly. Oliver started--that was one of the things so few people knew about Ted. “Oh yes--wholly. Even in the way he'd go to the devil. He'd do it with such a religious conviction--take it so _hard_. It would eat him up. Completely. And it isn't--amusing--to go to the devil with anybody whose diabolism would be so efficiently pious--a reversed kind of Presbyterianism. We wouldn't do that, you know--you or myself,” and for an instant as she spoke Oliver felt what he characterized as a most damnable feeling of kinship with her. It was true. Oliver had been struck with that during his army experiences--things somehow had never seemed to stick to him the way they had seemed to with Ted.