Miss Morrison waited for him to go on. When he did not she added, still fanning herself, and without turning to him: "Have you forgotten when you went to Miss Morris's school?"
"Miss Morris's school?" He could see no connection between that almost forgotten past and this meeting with an occupant of Mrs. Kahrle's boarding-house. He laughed nervously. "Perhaps, if I could see you, I"
Pittsey had struck a match to relight his cigar. She said to him: "Give me that one, Walter. You light another." And reaching the match from him, she turned with it held before her face, at the level of her chin, and looked, without a smile, at Don.
He did not notice the theatricality of the action. He saw only that she had the face of a beautiful mask, and that it was as self-possessed as marble itself, with living eyes that studied him as he stared at her. She said calmly: "He doesn't remember me."
He had a confused and vague recollection of having been in this same situation, of having heard her say these same words, before; but he could not remember where it had been, and he found nothing familiar in her face. The match burned out between them. She explained, as she dropped the glowing ember: "I'm Rose Morris—her little sister."
He recalled her as a small girl in short dresses, with a scarlet hair ribbon—a lonely figure in the playground of Miss Morris's school, where the other children had been suspicious of her as the sister of the tyrant. There had been something "queer" about her. They had accused her of spying on them and of carrying reports of their behaviour to Miss
