"In that case--" said he. He walked to the door and leaned against it as if the revelations he was about to make were such that she might try to escape before she heard him out. "In that case," he repeated, in that smooth, almost honeyed tone in which the psychoanalyst clothes even the most shocking statements, "let me say that you are the most phenomenal little liar, little Evie, that I have ever met--yes, among all the many I have known I gladly hand you the palm." "Mr. Lisburn!" said Evie, but she was so much surprised and interested that she did not do justice to her protest. "What makes me angry," he went on in his civil tone, "is that you should imagine you could get away with it. However much of an ass you may consider me, you ought to have known that there was enough in the science of psychoanalysis to show from the very beginning that you were a fraud." "Not from the beginning!" said Evie. "From the first evening. You haven't one single symptom of a person with a neurosis--not one. If you knew a little bit more--pooh, if you knew anything at all about the subject--" "I read your book," she answered, as if this put the blame on him. "Not very intelligently, then, or you would have done a better fraud." "You were willing to waste a lot of time on a fraud." "It hasn't been wasted. And that brings me to my second point. I will now tell you what perhaps you don't know, and that is why you did it." "I know perfectly well, thank you," replied Evie. "I did it because you were so poisonous about me that afternoon at Aunt Georgy's. I thought I'd like to show you--" "That is a rationalization," he interrupted, waving it away with one hand. "You did it because you are strongly attracted to me." "Attracted to you!" said Evie in a most offensive tone. "I am the panther in the bushes." Evie laughed contemptuously. "I knew you'd think you were the panther," she said; "I simply knew it." "Of course you did," he answered. "That's the very reason you dreamed it." "But I didn't dream it," she returned triumphantly. "I thought you had grasped that. I didn't dream it. I never dream." He was not triumphed over. "Well," he said, "you made it up; that's the same thing--a daydream, a romance." "I made it up particularly in order to deceive you," Evie explained. "That's what you think," he answered; "but it isn't true. You made it up in order to let me know you were attracted to me, for I repeat that you are attracted to me." Little Evie sprang up from the deep chair in which she had sat at ease during so many evening conferences. "You may repeat it until you are black in the face," she said; "but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!" "Don't you see that the emotion with which you repudiate the idea proves that it's the truth?" An inspiration came to her. "Then why," she demanded--"the other afternoon when you explained so much why you didn't like me--why doesn't that prove that you are attracted to me?"