"In the name of heaven," he said, stung into momentary recklessness, "you don't suppose that I came here expecting any _fun_!" "Why--I had understood that it was purely a pleasure-trip that brought you here!" He made no answer to this, but stepped forward and swung open the door for her. "Maginnis," he said, "is to call for me immediately in a motor. We shall leave by the unobtrusive back alley. Two men, a motor, and a dark rear exit. You will scarcely imagine that there is any danger now. But may I thank you again for giving us warning when there _was_, perhaps, some danger?" "So you think there is a 'perhaps'? If you take precautions, it is only to humor a--" "I withdraw that 'perhaps,'" he broke out in a rush. "I blot it out, annihilate it. Who am I to catch at tatters of self-respect? Are you blind? Can't you see that every fiber of me is tingling with the knowledge that there was real danger, and that you saved me from it?" The quick bitterness in his voice, which there was no missing, was the last straw, breaking through her reserve, demolishing her dainty aloofness. She shook the swinging gray veil back out of her eyes and looked up at him, openly and frankly bewildered, looking very young and immeasurably alluring. "Will you tell me why you speak in that way? Will you tell me why it is the worst thing that has happened to you in Hunston to have been helped a little by me?" They faced each other at the open door, not an arm's length between them; and the moment of his reckoning for the quarter of an hour he had spent with her that night was suddenly upon him. He met her eyes, which were darkly blue, stared down into them; and as he did so, the spell of her beauty treacherously closed round him, piping away his self-control, deadening him to the iron fact of who she was and who he was, shutting out all knowledge except that of her fragrant nearness. "It is absurd," he answered her suddenly, "but to save my life I can't decide whether you are tall or short." The front door came open with a bang; the noise brought him sharply to himself; and the next moment a pleasant impatient masculine voice called out: "I say, Miss Carstairs! Er--everything all right?" "Oh!--yes, Mr. Richards!" she called penitently. "I'm coming this minute. No, please don't go out with me, Mr. Varney. Don't let anybody see that you are here." "Certainly not," said he, struggling for a poise which he could not quite recapture. "Then will you be good enough to convey my gratitude to Mr. Higginson and say that I hope to have the opportunity of thanking him personally to-morrow?" "Yes, of course. Good-night once more--and good luck!" But he detained her long enough to put the plain business question which had been torturing his soul for the last twenty-four hours. "We shall see you at luncheon to-morrow?"