“Is it your ring?” asked the voice. “I mean . . . Evelyn . . . wears one, doesn’t she?”
“Does she?” Calderon asked drily. “She did.”
“I found it on the moor. This is hers. I brought it—”
Calderon checked himself again. He was rubbing the ring with his handkerchief, in case it had been dirtied.
“How did you know we were here?” said the voice, in a tone of piquant curiosity.
“Then—!” cried Calderon, feeling his face get very hot. He could have shouted at this confirmation of his most rosy hopes. It was with a terrible effort that be restrained himself. “Oh,” he said vaguely, “one does know.” He heard a real laugh this time, but smothered, as though the unknown were holding a handkerchief to her mouth.
“Evidently,” she said. “But how does one know?”
“How do you know that Evelyn didn’t tell me?” he parried. He felt it was a master stroke. “You don’t seem to have exhausted the possibilities.”
“No, of course. She might have,” admitted the mysterious voice. There was the tiniest silence. “But I don’t think she did. Of course, I don’t know.”
“No, of course,” Calderon politely agreed. “Is she quite well?”
“Oh!” cried the voice, shaking with amusement. “Don’t you know that? Hasn’t she told you that? It’s too bad to keep it from you!”
“What!” Calderon moved nearer. “She’s not ill!”
“She tells me very little about herself—very little,” he explained ingeniously. “You’ll have noticed that she doesn’t think of herself at all.”
A dryness came into the tone of his companion.
“You still idealize her, then?” Calderon heard.
“Yes. You see . . . it’s an odd thing,” he went on, “and one doesn’t talk about it. But you see I’m in love with her.”
There was another pause. A significant pause. “I think you’re very forgiving,” at last said a muffled voice. “I—”
“What I should like to know,” Calderon answered, as if weighing his words, “is whether she’s also very forgiving.”
“Oh,” said the voice, now very low. “You must ask her that.”
“Oh, Maurice, you’re crushing me!” cried the unknown suddenly. “There . . . Alice has finished singing. She’ll be coming. . . . Give me my ring. . . . Oh, my dear; of course I do!”
The ring was restored, to rest in its old position until memory’s course should be run.
“You fellows outside the medical profession have absolutely no conception of the terrors confronting a prominent physician and of the traps and snares and pitfalls laid for him at every turn.”