She stammered; Don Juan assumed her nerves were a byproduct of his partially bare chest and decided to take it as a compliment.

"Indeed." He took a second to crane his neck and cast about for another drink before turning his attention to her. His drink wasn't empty yet; he just hadn't wanted to seem to be peering at her too eagerly, since she was already on the verge of melting into a puddle. "Are you a friend of hers?" he asked with obvious curiosity. He knew that Porphyria had friends, of course — or at least he assumed she did, because she sometimes disappeared from the house to go visit them. Still, the idea had always seemed strange to him. If someone told him that when Porphyria was supposedly off visiting her friends she was actually lying to everyone and disappearing into the bog to commune with the swamp life he would have believed them. It was difficult to picture her doing any of the sorts of things young women did with their friends — sitting around sipping tea and exchanging gossip, shopping for trinkets, discussing the cheap serial novels they read.

---