"Why, they found it perfectly natural. They won't mention it--not of course unless somebody else tips them more, and I don't see why anybody should, do you?" Neale stood looking at her, a little consternation mingling with his astonishment. This was what it was to have been brought up in what people called a civilized way, this smooth mastery of concealment ... how easy it had been for her, at the breakfast table yesterday, not to give the faintest hint she had just been talking animatedly with him; and this morning not the faintest hint to Livingstone that she was laughing at his expense. Why, that lovely face was just like a mask. You hadn't the least idea what was going on behind it. There was a silence. She was looking up at him with a new expression, almost timidly. "You don't like my hiding things?" she asked him, coming to a stop. They were near the pension now, standing in the twilight on a deserted street. He aroused himself to shrug his shoulders and answer evasively, "Oh, it's not in the least any business of mine." "But you don't like it?" she insisted, looking straight at him with the deadly soft gaze that always made him lose his head entirely. "It's of no consequence--none," he murmured. But she still looked at him. He tried to think of some other evasive answer, but in the confusion of his mind he could not think at all. And he must say _something_. With alarm, with horror, he heard himself saying baldly, as he would to a man, to an intimate, the literal truth, "Well, no, not so very well, if you really want to know." It was as though he had seen himself swinging an ax at an angle that would bring the edge deep into his own flesh. He felt it cut deep and bleed. He dared not look at her. He wished to God he had gone on straight to Naples. Somehow he _was_ looking at her. Her face was deeply flushed. She looked as though he had struck her in the face. Well, now it was certainly all over. He might as well turn around and walk away and never look at her again. He said blunderingly, in a trembling voice, "I'm _so_ sorry! I didn't mean to say that. It's no business of mine. I'm awfully ashamed of myself. _Please_ forget it. What do _you_ care what I think? I'm nobody, nobody at all." "Why did you say that?" she asked him in a low voice, with a driving intensity of accent, as though more than anything else she must have an answer from him. "Well, you asked me," he said in abject misery, aware of the hideous, flat futility of such an answer. If only he were an expansive Italian now, he could think of some way openly to abase himself, instead of standing there callously and dully. "Oh, please don't think of it again," he implored her, wishing he could get down on his knees to beg her pardon. She drew a long breath and put her hand to her heart. "It's the first time anybody ever told the truth to me, you see," she said faintly, with a strange accent. "I ... I'll like it ... I think ... when I can get my breath."