it went
on soberly enough, "I shall be glad to have tea with you next
Friday--not Thursday, because I must be at the hut then. It was
stupid of me to have forgotten you--next time I will try to do better."
Well, she had done better the next time. She had not forgotten him
again--never, never again. That had been her first letter; how
absurd of Jerry, the magnificently careless, to have treasured it
all that time, the miserable, stilted little thing! She touched it
with curious fingers. Surely, surely he must have cared, to have
cared so much for that!

It seemed incredible that she hadn't remembered him at once when he
came into the hut that second time. Of course she had only seen him
for a moment and six months had passed--but he was so absurdly vivid,
every inch of him, from the top of his shining, dark head to the
heels of his shining, dark boots--and there were a great many inches!
How could she have forgotten, even for a minute, those eyes dancing
like blue fire in the brown young face, the swift, disarming charm
of his smile, and, above all, his voice--how, in the name of
absurdity could any one who had once heard it ever forget Jeremy
Langdon's voice? Even now she had only to close her eyes, and it
rang out again, with its clipped, British accent and its caressing
magic, as un-English as any Provincial troubadour's! And yet she had
forgotten--he had had to speak twice before she had even lifted her
head.

"Miss America--oh, I say, she's forgotten me, and I thought that I'd
made such an everlasting impression!" The delighted amazement
reached even her tired ears, and she had smiled wanly as she pushed
the pile of coppers nearer to him.

"Have you been in before? It's stupid of me, but there are such
hundreds of thousands of you, and you are gone in a minute, you see.
That's your change, I think."

"Hundreds of thousands of me, hey?" He had leaned across the counter,
his face alight with mirth. "I wish to the Lord my angel mother
could hear you--it's what I'm forever tellin' her, though just
between us, it's stuff and nonsense. I've got a well-founded
suspicion that I'm absolutely unique. You wait and see!"

And she had waited--and she had seen! She stirred a little, dropped
the note into the flames, and turned to the next, the quiet, mocking
mouth suddenly tortured and rebellious.

"No, you must be mad," it ran, the trim writing strangely shaken.
"How often have you seen me--five times? Do you know how o