“I’ve been everywhere,” he said, answering her question.  “I made two trips to China from San Francisco.  I was interested in Chinese antiques.  Then I went into a Persian rug thing, with a dealer.  We handled rugs; I went all over the Union.  After that, four years ago, I went to Persia and into India, and met some English people, and went with them to London.  Then I came back here, as a sort of press agent to a Swami who wanted to be introduced in America, and after he left I rather took up his work, Yogi and interpretive reading, ‘Chitra’ and ’Shojo’—­you don’t know them?”

She shook her head, sufficiently at ease now even to smile in faint derision.

“They eat it up, I assure you!” Royal Blondin said, in self-defence.

“Oh, I know they do!” Harriet agreed.  “I’ve been hearing a great deal about you lately!  You have a studio?”

“I have—­really!—­the prettiest studio in New York.  I rented my London rooms, with my furniture in them, and I have a little apartment in Paris, too, that I rent.”

“And what’s the future in it, Roy?” Now that the black dread was laid, she could almost like him.

“The present is extremely profitable,” he said, drily, “and I suppose there might be—­well, say a marriage in it, some day—­”

“A rich widow?” Harriet suggested, simply.

“Or a little girl with a fortune, like this little Carter girl,” he added, lightly.

Harriet gave him a swift look.

“Don’t talk nonsense!  Nina’s only a child!”

“She’s almost eighteen, isn’t she?”

The girl walked swiftly on for a full minute.

“How do you happen to know that?”

“Is it a secret?”

The possibility he hinted, however remote, was enough to stop her short, actually and mentally.  Considering, she stood still, with a face of distaste.  The hush before sunset flooded the quiet road.  A bird called plaintively from some low bush, was still, and called again.  From the river came the muffled, mellow note of a boat horn.  Two ponies looked over the brick wall, shook their tawny heads, and galloped to the field with a joyous affectation of terror.  Nina!  By what fantastic turn of the cards was Royal Blondin to be connected in her thoughts, after all these years, with Nina?

She looked at Blondin, who was watching her with a half-sulky, half-ingratiating air.

“My dear girl, that was merely an idle remark!” he said.

“Well, I hope so,” Harriet said, going on, “anyway, she’s a child!”

“You weren’t—­quite—­a child, at eighteen,” he reminded her.

The colour flooded her transparent dusky skin.

“That’s—­exactly—­what I was!” she said, drily.  “But talk to Nina, if you don’t believe me!  Everything that is school-girly and romantic and undeveloped, is Nina.  If you held her coat for her, she would embroider the circumstance into something significant and flattering!  She is absolutely inexperienced; she’s what I called her, a child!”