Hence I relate the facts for a private record.
When I first met Camilla Payne she was shorthand clerk or private
secretary, or whatever you call it, to Louis Ravengar. I saw her in his
office. Curiously, she didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the
moment. By the way, Polycarp, if it is indeed you who listen to this,
you must excuse my way of relating the facts. I can only tell the tale
in my own way. Besides meddling with finance, I've dabbled in pretty
nearly all the arts, including the art of fiction, and I can't leave out
the really interesting pieces of my narrative merely because you're a
lawyer and hate needless details, sentimental or otherwise. But _do_ you
hate sentimental details? I don't know. Anyhow, this isn't a counsel's
brief. What was I saying? Oh! She didn't make a tremendous impression on
me at the moment, but I thought of her afterwards. I thought of her a
good deal in a quiet way after I had left her--so much so that I made a
special journey to Ravengar's a few days afterwards, when there was no
real need for me to go, in order to have a look at her face again. I
should explain that I was dabbling in finance just then, fairly
successfully, and had transactions with Ravengar. He didn't know that I
was the son of the man who had taken his stepmother away from his
father, and I never told him I had changed my name, because the scandals
attached to it by Ravengar and his father had made things very
unpleasant for any bearer of that name.
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