The Splendid Folly | Page 7

said gaily. "May I?" And scarcely
waiting for her permission, he deliberately moved aside her things and

seated himself opposite her.
"But you were busy writing," she protested.
He threw an indifferent glance in the direction of his writing-pad,
where it lay on the seat in the corner.
"Was I?" he answered calmly. "Sometimes there are better things to do
than scribbling--pleasanter ones, anyway."
Diana flushed. It certainly was an unusual thing to do, to get into
conversation with an unknown man with whom one chanced to be
travelling, and she had never before committed such a breach of the
conventions--would have been shocked at the bare idea of it--but there
was something rather irresistible about this man's cool self-possession.
He seemed to assume that a thing must of necessity be right, since he
chose to do it.
She looked up and met his eyes watching her with a glint of amusement
in their depths.
"No, it isn't quite proper," he agreed, answering her unspoken thought.
"But I've never bothered about that if I really wanted to do a thing. And
don't you think"--still with that flicker of laughter in his eyes--"that it's
rather ridiculous, when two human beings are shut up in a box together
for several hours, for each of them to behave as though the other
weren't there?"
He spoke half-mockingly, and Diana, felt that within himself he was
ridiculing her prim little notions of conventionality. She flushed
uncomfortably.
"Yes, I--I suppose so," she faltered.
He seemed to understand.
"Forgive me," he said, with a sudden gentleness. "I wasn't laughing at
you, but only at all the absurd conventions by which we cut ourselves

off from many an hour of pleasant intercourse--just as though we had
any too many pleasures in life! But if you wish it, I'll go back to my
corner."
"No, no, don't go," returned Diana hastily. "It--it was silly of me."
"Then we may talk? Good. I shall behave quite nicely, I assure you."
Again the curiously familiar quality in his voice! She was positive she
had heard it before--that crisp, unslurred enunciation, with its keen
perception of syllabic values, so unlike the average Englishman's
slovenly rendering of his mother-tongue.
"Of what are you thinking?" he asked, smiling. And then the swift,
hawk-like glance of the blue eyes brought with it a sudden, sure sense
of recognition, stinging the slumbering cells of memory into activity. A
picture shaped itself in her mind of a blustering March day, and of a
girl, a man, and an errand-boy, careering wildly in the roadway of a
London street, while some stray sheets of music went whirling hither
and thither in the wind. It had all happened a year ago, on that critical
day when Baroni had consented to accept her as his pupil, but the
recollection of it, and the odd, snubbed feeling she had experienced in
regard to the man with the blue eyes, was as clear in her mind as
though it had occurred only yesterday.
"I believe we have met before, haven't we?" she said.
The look of gay good-humour vanished suddenly from his face and an
expression of blank inquiry took its place.
"I think not," he replied.
"Oh, but I'm sure of it. Don't you remember"--brightly--"about a year
ago. I was carrying some music, and it all blew away up the street and
you helped me to collect it again?"
He shook his head.

"I think you must be mistaken," he answered regretfully.
"No, no," she persisted, but beginning to experience some slight
embarrassment. (It is embarrassing to find you have betrayed a keen
and vivid recollection of a man who has apparently forgotten that he
ever set eyes on you!) "Oh, you must remember--it was in Grellingham
Place, and the greengrocer's boy helped as well."
She broke off, reading the polite negation in his face.
"You must be confusing me with some one else. I should not be likely
to--forget--so charming a rencontre."
There was surely a veiled mockery in his composed tones,
irreproachably courteous though they were, and Diana coloured hotly.
Somehow, this man possessed the faculty of making her feel awkward
and self-conscious and horribly young; he himself was so essentially of
the polished type of cosmopolitan that beside him she felt herself to be
as raw and crude as any bread-and-butter miss fresh from the
schoolroom. Moreover, she had an inward conviction that in reality he
recollected the incident in Grellingham Place as clearly as she did
herself, although he refused to admit it.
She relapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and presently the attendant
from the restaurant car came along the corridor and looked in to ask if
they were going to have dinner on the train. Both nodded an
affirmative.
"Table for two?" he queried, evidently taking them to