All these facts she brought out, as it were, in a bunch, without any very evident connexion, but he felt that the cord that bound them was there and that he could find it one day. But what surprised him most was her curious aloofness from it all, as if he were a friend, perhaps a chum, sometimes a bother and sometimes a danger, but never a father.
“But tell me about yourself,” he said, “what you like and what you do.”
“No, there’s really nothing. I’ve just lived here always, that’s all. You’re the first man I’ve talked to, except father, and you’re fun. I hope that we shall see you sometimes whilst you are staying here,” she added, quite frankly.
“Somebody told you to say that,” he said, laughing.
“Yes, it’s Miss Minns. She teaches me sometimes about what you ought to say, and I’m dreadfully stupid. There are so many of them. There’s ‘at a wedding’ and ‘at a funeral’ and there’s ‘the dinner party,’ a nice one and a dull one and a funny one, and there’s ‘at the theatre,’ and lots more. Sometimes I remember, but I’ve never had anyone to practise them on. You’re quite the first, so I think I ought to give you them all.”
The door opened and Maradick and Morelli came in. The pair at the window did not see them and the two men stood for a moment at the door. Morelli smiled, and Maradick at once felt again that curious unfounded sensation of distrust. The man amazed him. He had talked about his “things,” his armour, some tapestry, some pictures, with a knowledge and enthusiasm that made him fascinating. He seemed to have the widest possible grip on every subject; there was nothing that he did not know. And there had been, too, a lightness of touch, a humorous philosophy of men and things for which he had been quite unprepared.
And then again, there would be suddenly that strange distrust; a swift glance from under his eyelids, a suspicious lifting of the voice, as though he were on his guard against some expected discovery. And then, most puzzling of all, there was suddenly a simplicity, a _naïveté_, that belonged to childhood, some anger or pleasure that only a child could feel. Oh! he was a puzzle.
At the sight of those two in the window he felt suddenly a sharp, poignant regret! What an old fool he was to meddle with something that he had passed long, long before. You could not be adaptable at forty, and he would only spoil their game. A death’s head at the feast indeed, with his own happy home to think of, his own testimony to fling before them. But the regret was there all the same; regret that he had not known for ever so many years, and a feeling of loneliness that was something altogether new.