His gaze was fixed upon something which lay on the ground between his knees; something too small for her to see. Having made herself ready for the encounter, she let a bit of stone fall, with a rattling noise. He looked up.
Nin it was, but the change in him was at first sight awful.
His face was lined and parchment-like. There were puckers about his eyes, which looked sunken. He might have passed for ten years older than Wolf. For a long instant his look met hers as though he did not see her. Then suddenly there awoke, in his bewildered stare, something that resembled the Ninian she had known. With a swift movement he thrust the tress of hair into his breast pocket, snatched up what lay upon the grass, and with a flicker, a characteristic glance, he opened fire.
"Ah, well, you haven’t succeeded in growing any taller, you know, in spite of all your new dignities." His manner, at least, was unchanged, though his voice sounded forced and unnatural.
His words pulled Olwen together wonderfully. She had been on the very verge of self-betrayal—of a burst of silly tears. The familiar mocking seemed to put them back at once, just at the place where they left off, and she summoned her strength to fence with him as of old. "Yes," she replied, with a conventional smile, not moving forward, but speaking from her post in the entrance. "I am still a mouse, as your brother reminded me the other day; only the country mouse has become a town mouse."
A quiver crossed his face as her voice was heard. "Oh," he said, "so you really are, are you? I’ve once or twice thought I saw you before to-day—slipping round a corner or peeping over a wall; but never face to face like this. How did you get here?"
"My car is waiting at Twice-Brewed. I have walked from there, and am very hot. I didn’t expect to find you here."
"Obviously not," he replied, with a grin which showed his teeth to be as good as ever. "You looked as if you had found a black-beetle in the sugar-basin. However, I’m not a fixture, you know." As he spoke, he laid down the thing he held in his hand, as it were furtively, on the stone at the farther side of him, out of sight.
Determined to know what this was, she came suddenly forward and sank on the grass at his feet with a flutter of white skirts. The manoeuvre found him unprepared. Quickly he covered the little square bit of card with his hand; but her eyes were very keen, and she had seen that it was her own photo. She remembered that she had extracted it from a drawer while at the Pele, with the intention of sending it to her father, and had placed it on the mantelshelf in her room. She had never noticed the fact that it was not among the things so carefully packed and returned after her departure.