Yet--she felt like offering a little prayer of thanks--it was her intellect that enabled her to keep herself in control in this emergency. And with everything against her. Both her cheeks and her eyes tried to play her false. Only the heat from the burning logs before which she stooped saved her from an involuntary confession. They accounted, after a fashion, for her flushed skin and her excited eyes--brown still, but shot through and through with dazzling golden arrows as though some one had suddenly swept aside the autumn branches which kept them cool and let in the glare of the living sun. Reason, however, was still on her throne. She could still dictate as she chose the thoughts to which she would allow audible expression. The only trouble was that, in contrast with those she concealed, the spoken thoughts sounded so utterly inane that she would much have preferred to keep silent. That privilege, however, she could not permit herself. Silence was far more expressive than speech. So for another half-hour she rambled on in an effort to keep their conversation in the placid waters of banality until in desperation she was forced to seek safety in flight. This at a time when she knew that as far as her own thoughts went, flight offered no protection; this also at a time when she felt--uncannily enough--as though some unseen hand were on her arm urging her not to leave him. She could not account for that. It served further to confuse her. Doubtless it was merely a normal reaction to his strange mood. Yet it should not be in the face of her derision of that mood. At half-past nine Wilmer excused herself. “Perhaps a good night’s rest will help your fidgets,” she said to Allston, as she lighted her candle. He rose. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “Though I refuse to call them fidgets.” Her mind was aggressively acute to-night. She seemed driven to pick up every phrase and analyze it. “I wonder if it makes so much difference what we call things,” she reflected. “People argue over definitions as though it changed the thing itself.” “I suppose it’s just another attempt to be honest.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Or to avoid the truth--dishonestly.” “And yet if we spoke the stark truth as it comes to us, wouldn’t we make mistakes?” Again the warning flame across her cheeks. “Oh, it’s possible to keep on forever getting nowhere,” she exclaimed. “And you’re tired,” he said anxiously. “Good-night,” she answered simply. She was about to turn away when he extended his hand. “Good-night,” he said with a wistful plea in his voice. She hesitated a moment and then placed her own warm fingers within his broad palm. But only for a second. He had no time to close over them. “Good-night,” she whispered, and hurried up the stairs leading from the open room to the floor above. He watched her until she disappeared--the flash of her pretty ankle the last glimpse he had of her. CHAPTER XV