"Why do you keep hanging round Miss Averill?" she asked, bluntly. "What do you expect to get by that?"
"What do you expect to get by asking me?"
Her reply was a kind of challenge. "The truth. Do you know it?"
I felt uncomfortable. It was one of the rare occasions on which I had seen this flower-like face drop its bantering mask and grow serious. The voix de Montmartre had deepened in tone and put me on the defensive.
"I thought you told me on board ship that you looked on all people of Miss Averill's class as the prey of those in—in ours."
"I don't care what I told you on board ship. You're to keep where you belong as far as she's concerned—or I'll give the whole bloomin' show away, as they say in English vawdville."
"There again; it's what you said you wouldn't do. You said you'd be my friend—"
"I'll be your friend right up to there—but that's the high-water mark."
I thought it permissible to change my front. "If it comes to that, I've done no hanging round Miss Averill on my own account. It's you who've come for me to the Hotel Barcelona every time—"
"Harry made me do that; but even so—well, you don't have to fall in the water just because you're standing on a wharf."