"Hardly that," said Zia; "you forget that I am thirty-three, M. Poirot. I am frank with you, because it is no good being otherwise. As you told my father, it is exactly seventeen years since you aided us in Paris that time."
"When I look at you, it seems much less," said Poirot gallantly. "You were then very much as you are now, Mademoiselle, a little thinner, a little paler, a little more serious. Sixteen years old and fresh from your pension. Not quite the petite pensionnaire, not quite a woman. You were very delicious, very charming, Mademoiselle Zia; others thought so too, without doubt."
"At sixteen," said Zia, "one is simple and a little fool."
"That may be," said Poirot, "yes, that well may be. At sixteen one is credulous, is one not? One believes what one is told."
If he saw the quick sideways glance that the girl shot at him, he pretended not to have done so. He continued dreamily: "It was a curious affair that, altogether. Your father, Mademoiselle, has never understood the true inwardness of it."
"No?"
"When he asked me for details, for explanations, I said to him thus: 'Without scandal, I have got back for you that which was lost. You must ask no questions.' Do you know, Mademoiselle, why I said these things?"
"I have no idea," said the girl coldly.
"It was because I had a soft spot in my heart for a little pensionnaire, so pale, so thin, so serious."
"I don't understand what you are talking about," cried Zia angrily.