"I never thought you'd be so young, for one thing."
"I'm twenty-eight, but I know I look much younger than that. It's rather luck for me, isn't it? You see, I've been writing ever since I was nineteen."
"To tell you the truth, I thought the lady in black—the tall one—must be Miss Challoner."
"That's Mrs. Wolverton-Gush—Gushie. She's doing secretary for me for the time being—only it's mostly housekeeping."
"Are you—are you writing a book just now?" asked Denis reverently. He had a tremendous and indiscriminate admiration for any form of creative work.
"I'm correcting the proofs of my last one. It'll be out in October."
"May I—am I allowed to ask what it's called?"
She laughed.
"You may ask anything you like—I don't mind. But you're not obliged to pretend you're interested, you know. It's not as if I was a celebrity. I don't suppose you'd ever heard of me, before this evening."
"Indeed I had," said Denis quickly. "I know some of your work, in fact."
Instantly, he wished he had not said it. He didn't want to tell lies to Chrissie Challoner—he had only done so from habit.
"Do you really?" she said wistfully.
To Denis's incredulous astonishment, he heard himself replying: "No. That wasn't true. I haven't really read any of your books. I don't know why I said I had, just now, except, I suppose, that I wanted you to like me. But I can't say what isn't true, to you."
Almost as the words left his lips, he would have given anything to recall them. She'd think him mad—loathe and despise him. His whole body was invaded by a burning heat, and then an icy cold.
He had barely time to know it before she answered, in a quick, warm rush of words.
"I think it's wonderful of you to tell me that. The biggest compliment that anyone has ever paid me."
A gratitude so intense that it almost choked him, caught Denis by the throat. He had scarcely known, until then, that generosity could exist, for weaknesses such as his.
"I didn't know—I didn't think you'd understand," he stammered, the sense of exquisite relief bringing him perilously near to the tears that he always dreaded, because they came to him with such terrible readiness.
"But of course I do," she said softly. "I know why you wanted to—fib—it's so easy, isn't it?—and then how you wished you hadn't. Lots of people are like that. But not one in a thousand ever does what you did, afterwards."
"Oh—" said Denis, and to his horror, his voice broke slightly. "I didn't know there was anybody like you—anybody who'd understand."
"You poor boy!" she said under her breath, and without surprise, with only an upwelling sense of unspeakable comfort and reassurance, he felt her hand seeking for his, and clasping it.
"You're marvellous," said Denis, under his breath.
"Hasn't anyone ever given you any sort of understanding before?"
He shook his head dumbly.
"Have you been terribly lonely, always?"
"Always. My mother died when I was six. They sent me to a boarding-school where I wasn't happy—I was bullied, rather—" He shuddered, and hurried on quickly, warding off memories that he had avoided for years. "I wasn't ever very strong, physically, and I suppose I was sensitive. I was always unhappy, I know."
"Your father wasn't any good to you?"
"He married again. My stepmother didn't like me. She said I was deceitful, and told lies. I dare say it was true—in fact I know it was. You see, I was frightened."
"I know."
The passionate pity in her voice entranced him. He could scarcely believe it was really for him.
"You were frightened because you knew they wouldn't understand, and you thought they'd laugh at you, or despise you," she added softly. "And sometimes, those fears come to life again now, and make you say and do things you don't really mean—poor Denis!"
She called him by his name so naturally that it was not until afterwards that he realised she had done so.
"Hasn't there ever been anybody with whom you've dared to be really yourself?"
"No. Never really. Sometimes, for a little while, and in patches—but not always and about everything—oh no."
There was a sudden burst of noisy laughter from the group round the table, and a scuffle that overturned a wicker stool.... Denis, involuntarily, half stood up. Chrissie's small fingers, shifting to his wrist, gently forced him down again.
"It's all right, dear—don't go."
He sat down again, but the spell was broken. His terrible self-consciousness invaded him, he asked himself in an agony what all this meant—why he was giving himself away like this to a girl whom he didn't know, whom he had met for the first time half an hour ago?
"It's all right," repeated Chrissie urgently.
She seemed instantly to have sensed his change of mood.
"Denis, listen. I knew directly I saw you that we had something to do with one another. I can't tell you why, or what it means exactly. I expect after you've gone away to-night, you'll be frightened again, and wonder how we could ever have talked like this—two people who've only just met. But I want you to trust me. Do you think you could?"
"Chrissie——"
He didn't know what to say, unable to believe in what had befallen him, and fearful of alienating her sympathy either by word or silence.
The other people—he thought of them in a sort of collective confusion—were moving about, talking and laughing, and making a lot of noise. Somebody started a gramophone, and the catchy refrain of a new dance-record blared out into the night.
The cheap appeal of it acted as a direct stimulus to Denis's already quivering emotionalism.
"Do you really mean it? Do you really want us to be friends?" he asked, still half incredulous.
"Really, really, Denis. I'm lonely, too—not like you've been, but quite enough. I'll tell you, some day. I know it sounds absurd, but I think you and I have been looking for one another, all this time."
"I used to think there must be someone like you in the world, and that some day we'd meet," he murmured. "But I'd given up any hope of it—even now, I don't feel it can really be true."
"Anyone want a drink?" shouted a man's voice.
"You don't, do you?" whispered Chrissie.
Denis shook his head, still dazed.
The gramophone record came to an end, and the sound of voices surged up again, interspersed with loud laughter
