“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I thought—”

He stopped again. His eyes, dazzled with the light, had not seen clearly. They did so now.

“You!” he cried.

The girl looked at him, first with surprise, then with a cool hostility. There was a long pause. Eighteen months had passed since they had parted, and conversation does not flow easily after eighteen months of silence, especially if the nature of the parting has been bitter and stormy.

He was the first to speak.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I thought my doings had ceased to interest you,” she said. “I am Mr. Blaythwayt’s secretary. I have been here a fortnight. I have wondered if we should meet. I used to see you sometimes in the street.”

“I never saw you.”

“No?” she said, indifferently.

He ran his hand through his hair in a dazed way.

“Do you know we are locked in?” he said.

He had expected wild surprise and dismay. She merely clicked her tongue in an annoyed manner.

“Again!” she said. “What a nuisance! I was locked in only a week ago.”

He looked at her with unwilling respect, the respect of the novice for the veteran. She was nothing to him now, of course. She had passed out of his life. But he could not help remembering that long ago—eighteen months ago—what he had admired most in her had been this same spirit, this game refusal to be disturbed by Fate’s blows. It braced him up.

He sat down and looked curiously at her.

“So you’ve left the stage?” he said.

“I thought we agreed when we parted not to speak to one another,” said she, coldly.

“Did we? I thought it was only to meet as strangers.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Is it? I often talk to strangers.”

“What a bore they must think you!” she said, hiding one-eighth of a yawn with the tips of two fingers. “I suppose,” she went on, with faint interest, “you talk to them in trains when they are trying to read their paper?”

“I don’t force my conversation on anyone.”

“Don’t you?” she said, raising her eyebrows in sweet surprise. “Only your company—is that it?”

“Are you alluding to the present occasion?”

“Well, you have an office of your own in this building, I believe.”