“You are alone?” he said, dropping his voice into a richer and wondering tone.
“And why shouldn’t I be?”
He detected the belligerency, good-humoured though it was, of the person frequently on the defensive against criticism.
“Well, it is unusual to find a woman who is sane enough to be alone, and on such good terms with the night that she will wander about with it. But you must be very lonely, Miss Carr.”
This simple directness amazed Valerie. She did not know what she had expected him to be, but he was saying things that struck her as astonishingly unusual. Or perhaps it was that his glamorous personality infused ordinary syllables with an extraordinary force.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I have always been happiest alone.”
He instantly raised the hand that held his pipe to a salute. “I won’t disturb your dreams,” he said softly. “Good-night,” and moved on.
“Oh, I didn’t mean you to go like that,” she exclaimed spontaneously.
But he waved his hand at her and did not stop. She stood still looking after him till he had disappeared, and he knew, with a funny vague premonition, that she did.
She thought of him all the way home. She compared him again with her father. Davenport Carr had been born into the Brahmin caste, and Dane Barrington into the artist. Though Dane’s marriage and his looks had projected him into the other for a while, Valerie doubted if in spirit he had ever belonged there. Her father had talked of his fascination as a dinner host, had excused his informal dress, had called him a special case, always with the implication that he was a privileged outsider. It had
