"First," she said, "let me tell you this. I want to have you understand why I was anxious that you should not think worse of me than I deserved. I am rather a spoilt woman. I have grown used to having my own way; I wanted to know you, I have wanted to for some time. We have passed one another day after day; I knew quite well all the time who you were, and it seemed so stupid! Do you know once or twice I have had an insane desire to come right up to your chair and break in upon your meditations,--hold out my hand and make you talk to me? That would have been worse than this, would it not? But I firmly believe that I should have done it some day. So you see I wrote my little note in self-defence."
"I do not know that I should have been so completely surprised after all," he said. "I, too, have felt something of what you have expressed. I have been interested in your comings and your goings. But then you knew that, or you would never have written to me."
"One sacrifices so much," she murmured, "on the altars of the modern Goddess. We live in such a tiny compass,--nothing ever happens. It is only psychologically that one's emotions can be reached at all. Events are quite out of date. I am speaking from a woman's point of view."
"You should have lived," he said, smiling, "in the days of Joan of Arc."
"No doubt," she answered, "I should have found that equally dull. What I was endeavouring to do was, first of all to plead some justification for wanting to know you. For a woman there is nothing left but the study of personalities."
"Mine," he answered with a faint gleam in his eyes, "is very much at your service."
"I am going to take you at your word," she warned him.
"You will be very much disappointed. I am perfectly willing to be dissected, but the result will be inadequate."
She leaned back amongst the cushions and looked at him thoughtfully.
"Listen," she said; "I can tell you something of your history, as you will see. I want you to fill in the blanks."
"Mine," he murmured, "will be the greater task. My life is a record of blank places. The history is to come."
"This," she said, "is the extent of my knowledge. You were the second son of Sir Lionel Matravers, and you have been an orphan since you were very young. You were meant to take Holy Orders, but when the time came you declined. At Oxford you did very well indeed. You established a brilliant reputation as a classical scholar, and you became a fellow of St. John's.