found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent.  It dwindled very fast for so big a place.  I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said:  “I think you mentioned last night a name I know—­that of Mr. Porterfield.”

“Oh no I didn’t!” she answered very straight while she smiled at me through her closely-drawn veil.

“Then it was your mother.”

“Very likely it was my mother.”  And she continued to smile as if I ought to have known the difference.

“I venture to allude to him because I’ve an idea I used to know him,” I went on.

“Oh I see.”  And beyond this remark she appeared to take no interest; she left it to me to make any connexion.

“That is if it’s the same one.”  It struck me as feeble to say nothing more; so I added “My Mr. Porterfield was called David.”

“Well, so is ours.”  “Ours” affected me as clever.

“I suppose I shall see him again if he’s to meet you at Liverpool,” I continued.

“Well, it will be bad if he doesn’t.”

It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did:  that only came later.  So I remarked that, not having seen him for so many years, it was very possible I shouldn’t know him.

“Well, I’ve not seen him for a considerable time, but I expect I shall know him all the same.”

“Oh with you it’s different,” I returned with harmlessly bright significance.  “Hasn’t he been back since those days?”

“I don’t know,” she sturdily professed, “what days you mean.”

“When I knew him in Paris—­ages ago.  He was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  He was studying architecture.”

“Well, he’s studying it still,” said Grace Mavis.

“Hasn’t he learned it yet?”

“I don’t know what he has learned.  I shall see.”  Then she added for the benefit of my perhaps undue levity:  “Architecture’s very difficult and he’s tremendously thorough.”

“Oh yes, I remember that.  He was an admirable worker.  But he must have become quite a foreigner if it’s so many years since he has been at home.”

She seemed to regard this proposition at first as complicated; but she did what she could for me.  “Oh he’s not changeable.  If he were changeable—­”

Then, however, she paused.  I daresay she had been going to observe that if he were changeable he would long ago have given her up.  After an instant she went on:  “He wouldn’t have stuck so to his profession.  You can’t make much by it.”

I sought to attenuate her rather odd maidenly grimness.  “It depends on what you call much.”

“It doesn’t make you rich.”

“Oh of course you’ve got to practise it—­and to practise it long.”