I had to introduce them and it was hard to do, for it was necessary to reveal everything in a word.  I looked at Martin Conrad when I presented him to my husband and he did not move a muscle.  Then I looked at my husband and under a very small bow his face grew dark.

I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as they stood together—­Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his look of splendid health, and my husband with his sallow cheeks and his appearance of wasted strength—­and somehow from some unsearchable depths of my soul the contrast humbled me.

When I introduced Alma she took Martin’s hand and held it while she gazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she always did when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in this instance her glance fell with no more effect on its object than a lighted vesta on a running stream.

After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was staying in the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some day.

“Certainly!  Delighted!  With all the pleasure in the world,” said Martin.

“Then,” said my husband with rather frigid politeness, “you will see more of your friend Mary.”

“Yes,” said Alma, in a way that meant much, “you will see more of your friend Mary.”

“Don’t you worry about that, ma’am.  You bet I will,” said Martin, looking straight into Alma’s eyes; and though she laughed as she passed into the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see that for the first time in her life a man’s face had frightened her.

“Then you knew?” I said, when they were gone.

“Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us into port and he . . .”

“Dr. O’Sullivan?”

“That’s the man!  Isn’t he a boy?  And, my gracious, the way he speaks of you!  But now . . . now you must go to breakfast yourself, and I must be off about my business.”

“Don’t go yet,” I said.

“I’ll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet the Lieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and . . .”

“Then you must go.”

“Not yet.  Sit down again.  Five minutes will do no harm.  And by the way, now that I look at you again, I’m not so sure that you . . .  Italy, Egypt, there’s enough sun down there, but you’re pale . . . a little pale, aren’t you?”

I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and after a moment he asked: 

“How long are you staying in London?”

I told him I did not know, whereupon he said: 

“Well, I’m to be here a month, making charts and tables and reports for the Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for anything . . . do you want me now?”

“No-o, no, not now,” I answered.

“Well, if you do want me for anything—­anything at all, mind, just pass the word and the charts and the tables and the reports and the Royal Geographical Society may go to the . . .  Well, somewhere.”