'Didn't you tell me that you knew Mr. Porterfield?'
'Dear me, yes—I used to see him. I have often wanted to talk to you about him.'
She turned her face upon me and in the deepened evening I fancied she looked whiter. 'What good would that do?'
'Why, it would be a pleasure,' I replied, rather foolishly.
'Do you mean for you?'
'Well, yes—call it that,' I said, smiling.
'Did you know him so well?'
My smile became a laugh and I said—'You are not easy to make speeches to.'
'I hate speeches!' The words came from her lips with a violence that surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder at it she went on—'Shall you know him when you see him?'
'Perfectly, I think.' Her manner was so strange that one had to notice it in some way, and it appeared to me the best way was to notice it jocularly; so I added, 'Shan't you?'
'Oh, perhaps you'll point him out!' And she walked quickly away. As I looked after her I had a singular, a perverse and rather an embarrassed sense of having, during the previous days, and especially in speaking to Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation to her loss. I had a sort of pang in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible for it and asked myself why I could not have kept my hands off. I had seen Jasper in the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it, and half an hour before this I had observed,
