“No, Mrs. Wordling.”

“Don’t you think you are rather careless with your friends?” she asked, as one whom the earth had made much to mourn.  “It is true, I haven’t been here many times for dinner (there have been so many invitations), but breakfasts and luncheons—­always I have peeked into the farthest corners hoping to see you—­before I sat down alone.”

“I have missed a great deal, but it’s good to be thought of,” he said.

“You didn’t mean, then, to be careless with your friends?”

“No.”

“I thought you were avoiding me.”

“If there were people here to be avoided, I’m afraid I shouldn’t stay.”

“But supposing you liked the place very much, and there was just one whom you wished to avoid——­”

He laughed.  “I give it up.  I might stay—­but I don’t avoid—­certainly not one of my first friends in New York——­”

“Yes, I was a member of the original company, when David Cairns’ Sailor-Friend was produced....  How different you seem from that night!” she added confidentially.  “How is it you make people believe you so?  You have been a great puzzle to me—­to us.  I supposed at first you were just a breezy individual, whom David Cairns (who is a very brilliant man) had found an interesting type——­”

“So long as I don’t fall from that, it is enough,” Bedient answered.  “But why do you say I make people believe——?”

Mrs. Wordling considered.  “I never quite understood about one part of that typhoon story,” she qualified.  “You were carrying the Captain across the deck, and a Chinese tried to knife you.  You just mentioned that the Chinese died.”

“Yes,” said Bedient, who disliked this part of the story, and had shirred the narrative.

“But I wanted to hear more about it——­”

“That was all.  He died.  There were only a few survivors.”

Mrs. Wordling’s head was high-held.  She was sniffing the night, with the air of a connoisseur.  “Do you smell the mignonette, or is it Sweet William?  Something we had in the garden at home when I was little....  Are you afraid to go across in the park—­with me?”

“Sailors are never afraid,” he said, following her pointed finger to the open gate.

They crossed the street laughingly.  There had been no one at the Club entrance....  They never determined what the fragrance was, though they strolled for some time through the paths of the park, among the thick low trees, and finally sat down by the fountain.  The moonlight, cut with foliage, was magic upon the water.  Bedient was merry in heart.  The rising error which might shadow this hour was clear enough to him, but he refused to reckon with it.  He was interested, and a little troubled, to perceive there was nothing in common in Mrs. Wordling’s mind and his.  They spoke a different language.  He was sorry, for he knew she could think hard and suddenly, if he had the power to say the exact thing.