of news and expressed
unlimited interest in each other's history since our last meeting. I
mightn't judge of what Mrs. Pallant kept back, but for myself I quite
overflowed. She let me see at any rate that her life had been a good
deal what I supposed, though the terms she employed to describe it were
less crude than those of my thought. She confessed they had drifted,
she and her daughter, and were drifting still. Her narrative rambled
and took a wrong turn, a false flight, or two, as I thought Linda
noted, while she sat watching the passers, in a manner that betrayed no
consciousness of their attention, without coming to her mother's aid.
Once or twice Mrs. Pallant made me rather feel a cross-questioner, which
I had had no intention of being. I took it that if the girl never put in
a word it was because she had perfect confidence in her parent's ability
to come out straight. It was suggested to me, I scarcely knew how, that
this confidence between the two ladies went to a great length; that
their union of thought, their system of reciprocal divination, was
remarkable, and that they probably seldom needed to resort to the clumsy
and in some cases dangerous expedient of communicating by sound. I
suppose I made this reflexion not all at once--it was not wholly the
result of that first meeting. I was with them constantly for the next
several days and my impressions had time to clarify.

I do remember, however, that it was on this first evening that Archie's
name came up. She attributed her own stay at Homburg to no refined nor
exalted motive--didn't put it that she was there from force of habit or
because a high medical authority had ordered her to drink the waters;
she frankly admitted the reason of her visit to have been simply that
she didn't know where else to turn. But she appeared to assume that
my behaviour rested on higher grounds and even that it required
explanation, the place being frivolous and modern--devoid of that
interest of antiquity which I had ever made so much of. "Don't you
remember--ever so long ago--that you wouldn't look at anything in Europe
that wasn't a thousand years old? Well, as we advance in life I suppose
we don't think that quite such a charm." And when I mentioned that I had
arrived because the place was as good as another for awaiting my nephew
she exclaimed: "Your nephew--what nephew? He must have come up of
late." I answered that his name was Archie Parker and that he was modern
indeed