, it isn't quite proper," he agreed, answering her unspoken thought.
"But I've never bothered about that if I really wanted to do a thing.
And don't you think"--still with that flicker of laughter in his
eyes--"that it's rather ridiculous, when two human beings are shut up in
a box together for several hours, for each of them to behave as though
the other weren't there?"

He spoke half-mockingly, and Diana, felt that within himself he was
ridiculing her prim little notions of conventionality. She flushed
uncomfortably.

"Yes, I--I suppose so," she faltered.

He seemed to understand.

"Forgive me," he said, with a sudden gentleness. "I wasn't laughing at
you, but only at all the absurd conventions by which we cut ourselves off
from many an hour of pleasant intercourse--just as though we had any too
many pleasures in life! But if you wish it, I'll go back to my corner."

"No, no, don't go," returned Diana hastily. "It--it was silly of me."

"Then we may talk? Good. I shall behave quite nicely, I assure you."

Again the curiously familiar quality in his voice! She was positive she
had heard it before--that crisp, unslurred enunciation, with its keen
perception of syllabic values, so unlike the average Englishman's
slovenly rendering of his mother-tongue.

"Of what are you thinking?" he asked, smiling. And then the swift,
hawk-like glance of the blue eyes brought with it a sudden, sure sense of
recognition, stinging the slumbering cells of memory into activity. A
picture shaped itself in her mind of a blustering March day, and of a
girl, a man, and an errand-boy, careering wildly in the roadway of a
London street, while some stray sheets of music went whirling hither and
thither in the wind. It had all happened a year ago, on that critical
day when Baroni had consented to accept her as his pupil, but the
recollection of it, and the odd, snubbed feeling she had experienced in
regard to the man with the blue eyes, was as clear in her mind as though
it had occurred only yesterday.

"I believe we have met before, haven't we?" she said.

The look of gay good-humour vanished suddenly from his face and an
expression of blank inquiry took its place.

"I think not," he replied.

"Oh, but I'm sure of it. Don't you remember"--brightly--"about a year
ago. I was carrying some music, and it all blew away up the street and
you helped me to collect it again?"

He shook his head.

"I think you must be mistaken,"