Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/208

194 covered. "I seem to have uttered a bêtise—but I haven't. I only mean that a different title belongs, somehow, to a different character."

"I don't admit my character to be different," Rose said; "save perhaps in the sense of its having become a little intensified. If I was here before as Julia's friend, I'm here still more as Julia's friend now."

Tony meditated, with all his candour; then he gave a highly cordial, even if a slightly illogical assent. "Of course you are—from your own point of view." He evidently only wanted to meet her as far on the way to a quiet life as he could manage. "Dear little Julia!" he exclaimed in a manner which, as soon as he had spoken, he felt to be such a fresh piece of pointlessness that, to carry it off, he got up again.

"Dear little Julia!" Rose echoed, speaking out loud and clear, but with an expression which, unlike Tony's, would have left on the mind of an ignorant auditor no doubt of its conveying a reference to the unforgotten dead.

Tony strolled towards the hammock. "May I smoke a cigarette?" She approved with a gesture