“Will you please remember that I like you because you are not in the habit of making speeches.”

“I beg pardon.  I won’t offend again.  Well, then, I will confess that I don’t know why you wear jewels.  There must be a Puritan strain in my character, for I cannot enter into the desire for jewels.  I say this merely because you have practically invited me to be brutal.”

Now that I recall that conversation I realize how gentle she was towards my crude and callous notions concerning personal adornment.

“Yet you went to England in order to fetch my jewels.”

“No, I went to England in order to be of use to a lady.  But tell me—­why do you wear jewels off the stage?”

“Simply because, having them, I have a sort of feeling that they ought to be used.  It seems a waste to keep them hidden in a strong box, and I never could tolerate waste.  Really, I scarcely care more for jewels, as jewels, than you do yourself.”

“Still, for a person who doesn’t care for them, you seem to have a fair quantity of them.”

“Ah!  But many were given to me—­and the rest I bought when I was young, or soon afterwards.  Besides, they are part of my stock in trade.”

“When you were young!” I repeated, smiling.  “How long is that since?”

“Ages.”

I coughed.

“It is seven years since I was young,” she said, “and I was sixteen at the time.”

“You are positively venerable, then; and since you are, I must be too.”

“I am much older than you are,” she said; “not in years, but in life.  You don’t feel old.”

“And do you?”

“Frightfully.”

“What brings it on?”

“Oh!  Experience—­and other things.  It is the soul which grows old.”

“But you have been happy?”

“Never—­never in my life, except when I was singing, have I been happy.  Have you been happy?”

“Yes,” I said, “once or twice.”

“When you were a boy?”

“No, since I have become a man.  Just—­just recently.”

“People fancy they are happy,” she murmured.

“Isn’t that the same thing as being happy?”

“Perhaps.”  Then suddenly changing the subject:  “You haven’t told me about your journey.  Just a bare statement that there was a delay on the railway and another delay on the steamer.  Don’t you think you ought to fill in the details?”

So I filled them in; but I said nothing about my mysterious enemy who had accompanied me, and who after strangely disappearing and reappearing had disappeared again; nor about the woman whom I had met on the Admiralty Pier.  I wondered when he might reappear once more.  There was no proper reason why I should not have told Rosa about these persons, but some instinctive feeling, some timidity of spirit, prevented me from doing so.

“How thrilling!  Were you frightened on the steamer?” she asked.

“Yes,” I admitted frankly.