Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/251

Rh place of books and most other occupations. I never forget a face."

Teresa glanced at him with some surprise.

"I should not have thought that people counted much with you. I mean—you struck me somehow as a solitary person, one living apart from people. But after all, what do first impressions count?"

"They count much with me—for I have to act on them, generally, pretty promptly. I assure you, my life out there is anything but solitary. I have to deal with people every day—not in the afternoon-tea fashion, you know, but in matters involving life and death, often for them—and occasionally for myself."

He said it smiling, as a matter of course, and went on, as if it were a part of the same subject.

"I shall never forget my first impression of you—or rather the second, at Mrs. Blackley's. There was a radiance about you that night, a look of happiness, that one somehow doesn't often see."

"Yes. I was happy. …"

She said no more till Crayven had called a cab, and they were driving toward the tea-shop. Then they talked a little about Alice Blackley. Alice had not carried out her plan of invading the desert.

"I hope she has managed to amuse herself