Miranda shrugged her shoulders.
"I had no right to expect you would." She pushed out a foot in a polished shoe beyond the hem of her dress, contemplated it with great interest, and suddenly withdrew it with much circumstance of modesty. Then with an involuntary gesture of repugnance which Charnock did not understand, she went over to the window and stood looking out from it. From that position too she spoke.
"You promised that night, if you have not forgotten, at Lady Donnisthorpe's, on the balcony, to tell me about yourself, about those years you spent in Westminster." And Charnock broke in upon her speech in a voice of relief.
"I understand," said he.
"What?"
"You," he replied simply.
"Oh, I hope not," she returned; "for when a woman becomes intelligible to a man, he loses all--liking for her," and she spoke the word "liking" with extreme shyness as though there were a bolder word with which he might replace it if he chose. "Is not that the creed?"
"A false creed," said he, and her eyes fell upon the open book. She uttered a startled exclamation, threw a quick glance at Charnock, closed the book and covered it with a newspaper.
"Let us go into the garden," said she; "and you shall talk to me of those years in which I am most interested."
"That I can understand," said he, and she glanced at him sharply, suspiciously, but there was no sarcasm in his accent. He had hit upon an explanation of the change in her. She stood in peril, she needed help, and very likely help of a kind which implied resource, which involved danger. She knew nothing of him, nothing of his capacity. It was no more than natural that he should require to know and that she should sound his years for the knowledge, before she laid him under the obligation of doing her a service.