“The ruler of the aviary,” I muttered viciously.

“It annoys you that I should talk of that time?” she asked in a tender voice.  “Well, I won’t, except for once to say that you must not make a mistake:  in that aviary he was the man.  I know because he used to talk to me afterwards sometimes.  Strange!  For six years he seemed to carry all the world and me with it in his hand. . . . "

“He dominates you yet,” I shouted.

She shook her head innocently as a child would do.

“No, no.  You brought him into the conversation yourself.  You think of him much more than I do.”  Her voice drooped sadly to a hopeless note.  “I hardly ever do.  He is not the sort of person to merely flit through one’s mind and so I have no time.  Look.  I had eleven letters this morning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which have tangled up everything.  I am quite frightened.”

And she explained to me that one of them—­the long one on the top of the pile, on the table over there—­seemed to contain ugly inferences directed at herself in a menacing way.  She begged me to read it and see what I could make of it.

I knew enough of the general situation to see at a glance that she had misunderstood it thoroughly and even amazingly.  I proved it to her very quickly.  But her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness and arose so obviously from the distraction of an acute mind, that I couldn’t help looking at her admiringly.

“Rita,” I said, “you are a marvellous idiot.”

“Am I?  Imbecile,” she retorted with an enchanting smile of relief.  “But perhaps it only seems so to you in contrast with the lady so perfect in her way.  What is her way?”

“Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her sixtieth and seventieth year, and I have walked tete-a-tete with her for some little distance this afternoon.”

“Heavens,” she whispered, thunderstruck.  “And meantime I had the son here.  He arrived about five minutes after Rose left with that note for you,” she went on in a tone of awe.  “As a matter of fact, Rose saw him across the street but she thought she had better go on to you.”

“I am furious with myself for not having guessed that much,” I said bitterly.  “I suppose you got him out of the house about five minutes after you heard I was coming here.  Rose ought to have turned back when she saw him on his way to cheer your solitude.  That girl is stupid after all, though she has got a certain amount of low cunning which no doubt is very useful at times.”

“I forbid you to talk like this about Rose.  I won’t have it.  Rose is not to be abused before me.”

“I only mean to say that she failed in this instance to read your mind, that’s all.”