"I'm not very good at keeping names and faces in mind," she replied, "unless they belong to people I have known very well."
"Indeed!" his voice dropped to the 'cello-like undertone now; "isn't that a little unkind? I fancied that _we_ knew each other very well! My conceit is not to be pandered to, I perceive."
"Ye-e-s--does it seem that way?" said she, ignoring the last remark. "Well, you know it was only for a few days, and you kept calling yourself by some ridiculous alias, and scarcely used your surname at all, and I believe they called you Johnny--and you can't think what a disguise such a beard is! But I remember you now perfectly. It quite brings back those short months, when I was so young--and was finding things out! I can see the vine-covered porch, and Madame Lamoreaux's boarding-house on the South Side--"
"Why, there was one, wasn't there?" said she, "somewhere along the lake front, wasn't it?... Such a pleasant meeting, and so odd!"
I sat up in the hammock, and stared at them as they went on their promenade. The old art gallery, the vine-covered porch, the young man with the smooth-shaven dark face and the thrilling, vibrant voice, and the young, young girl with the ruddy hair, and the little, round form! She seemed taller now, and there was more of maturity in the figure; but it was the same lissome waist and petite gracefulness which had so fully explained to me the avid eyes of her lover on that day when I had fled from the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization. It was the Empress Josephine, I had known that--and her Sir John!
Then I thought of her flying from him into the street, and the little bowed head on the street-car; and the old pity for her, the old bitterness toward him, returned upon me. I wondered how he could speak to her in this nonchalant way; what they were saying to each other; whether they would ever refer to that night at Auriccio's; what Alice would think of him if she ever found it out; whether he was a villain, or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours; what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself would regard him.