She indicated a door, and returned to her room. He made his ablutions slowly and very thoughtfully. There were elements in this new twist of the situation which did not tally with any of his former hypotheses. Doris, too, was doing some thinking on her own account. When he returned to the sitting-room she wore the air of one who has pondered deeply and has come to a conclusion. "What do your friends call you?" she abruptly asked. "All kinds of things," admitted the young man. "I wouldn't dare to repeat some of them." Under the thoughtful regard of her red-brown eyes his manner changed. "My sister calls me Laurie," he added soberly. "May I?" "By all means, if you'll promise _not_ to be a sister to me." "Then--Laurie--" "I like that," he interrupted. "So do I. Laurie--I--I'm going to tell you something." He waited, watching her; and under the renewed friendliness of his black eyes she stopped and flushed, her own eyes dropping before his. As if to gain time she changed her position in the chair where she sat, and leaned forward, an elbow on its arm, her chin in one hand, her gaze on the fire. His perception sharpened to the knowledge that something important was coming, and that it was something she was afraid to tell. She had keyed herself up to it, but the slightest false move on his part might check the revelation. Therefore, though every impulse in him responded to her first intimate use of his name, he dropped negligently into the chair facing hers, tenderly embraced his knees with both arms, and answered with just the right accent of casual interest and interrogation. "Yes?" he said. "Please smoke." Again she was playing for time. "And--and don't look at me," she added, almost harshly. "I--I think I can get it out better if you don't." His answer was to swing his chair around beside hers, facing the blazing logs, and to take out his case and light a cigarette. "I'm going to tell you everything," she said in a low tone. "I'm glad of that." "I'm going to do it," she went on slowly, "for two reasons. The first is that--that you've lost faith in me." This brought his eyes around to hers in a quick glance. "You're wrong about that." She shook her head. "Oh, no, I'm not. You showed it almost from the moment you came, and there was an instant when you thought that my suggestion to wait till dark to get away meant a--a sort of ambush." He made no reply to this, and she said urgently, "Didn't you? Come, now. Confess." He reflected for a moment. "The idea did cross my mind," he admitted, at last. "But it didn't linger. For one reason, it was impossible to reconcile it with Shaw's desire to keep me out of the way. That, and this, are hard to understand. But no harder to understand," he went on, "than that you should willingly come here and yet send for me, and then quite obviously delay our leaving after I get here." Again her eyes dropped before his brilliant, steady glance.