Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/240

228 feeling. Then she said: "You asked me just now why I've come back."

He stared as for the connection; after which with a smile: "Not to do that—?"

She waited briefly again, but with a queer little look. "I can do those things now; and—yes!—that's in a manner why. I came," she then said, "because I knew of a sudden one day—knew as never before—that I was old."

"I see. I see." He quite understood—she had notes that so struck him. "And how did you like it?"

She hesitated—she decided. "Well, if I liked it, it was on the principle perhaps on which some people like high game!"

"High game—that's good!" he laughed. "Ah, my dear, we're 'high'!"

She shook her head. "No—not you—yet. I at any rate didn't want any more adventures," Cornelia said.

He showed their small relic again with assurance. "You wanted us. Then here we are. Oh, how we can talk!—with all those things you know! You are an invention. And you'll see there are things I know. I shall turn up here—well, daily."

She took it in, but after a moment only answered. "There was something you said just now you'd tell me. Don't you mean to try—?"

"Mrs Worthingham?" He drew from within his coat his pocket-book and carefully found a place in it for Mary Cardew's carte-de-visite, folding it