Her persistence confused him. Most, he thought, would probably have passed him by without a second glance, or if they had stopped, would have done so only long enough to satisfy themselves that he was not either dead or actively in the process of dying. Good Samaritans, as the Christian stories had them, were not so common as the religion itself, and most would have been content with the bare minimum courtesy they believed required of them. His fine should have been the end of the conversation, except it wasn't. Here she was, getting down to his level in order to see his face, and here she was offering him her coat. Who did that?

"That's — very kind of you," he said, genuinely, but did not move to take the coat. He couldn't possibly accept such an offer from a lady (what of chivalry!) even if he was cold, which he — well, he supposed now that he thought about it, he was. When had that happened? And when had the sun sunk so low?

"I'm not ill," he assured her. The paleness she had attributed to him might very well be the result of his last battle against the moon, not even a full week past, or it could have been something he'd acquired during the time that he'd been sitting here, paying no mind to the outside world. It might have even become a part of him since he had left the house so little during the months since September; it wasn't as though there was much sun to be had in the winter, anyway, but he certainly hadn't been out and about to soak it up. Maybe he was always white as a ghost. Who could say? Daniel would have been too courteous to point it out, and Lou himself certainly wouldn't have noticed. He did recognize, however, that he probably ought to offer some sort of explanation for it — otherwise she would hardly believe his claim that he was well (physically, at least) — and so, shifting his eyes down to his knees briefly, he confessed, "I suppose I just had a run-in with a ghost, of sorts."