"I told you once before," he said, in the tone that he had used to her at the studio "that I didn't think you—that."
"Ah, but you think me other things that are—worse."
"As what, for instance?" he asked, smiling.
"Oh frivolous, and vain, and heartless. A lot of horrid things."
"I only said you seemed so."
"Ah, then you think I'm better than I seem?" she asked, flippantly, yet with a swift inward pang.
He seemed to consider. "I think you are very—incomprehensible," he said at last.
She bent down over the tea-things, so that he could not see her face. "Oh, that's only," she said, in a low voice "because you haven't the key to the enigma. If you had it"—She paused. "You might not like the things you understood," she concluded.
Gerard put down his untasted cup. "I'm willing to take the risk," he said, deliberately.
He waited, as if for an answer, but none came. She appeared to busy herself with the tea-things. In the next room Paul Halleck began to sing the Evening Star song. It seemed to Gerard that Elizabeth turned a shade paler than she had been before.