She had sat down and he dropped into a chair facing her.
"I'll tell you," he went on. "I've been persuading myself that I owed you an explanation of my continued presence in Umballa and the narrowly averted embarrassment of two days ago. I've been trying to make myself believe that in that and that only lay my reason for wishing to see you again."
"And there was another reason?"
"There was another reason," he admitted. "I wasn't honest with myself. Gad! When a chap isn't honest with himself—"
"All men are like that," she told him. "The higher their ideals the less frankly honest they are with themselves. They just won't admit the old Adam in them."
"I haven't any will," he declared. "I haven't any pride."
She lay back in her chair, pleasantly amused.
"Of course you haven't," she said confidently. "I've taken them from you. It was very wicked of me, wasn't it?"
"Do you do that to—to all of us?" he asked seriously.
"I'm afraid I do," she admitted. "But quite unconsciously. I don't mean to. Oh, I never mean to."