"Perhaps, Mr. Hagan," he tentatively suggested, "you had better sit down again. Possibly we aren't quite through yet after all."
The detective reseated himself and his composure returned.
"Frankness is always best," he vouchsafed complacently. "I thought when we once came to understand each other, we'd get along."
While Eben Tollman was entertaining his unwelcome guest in the study his wife and Stuart Farquaharson were having tea on the terrace. Upon the recent combat of their wills there seemed to have succeeded a calmness of aftermath. If Stuart had as Conscience expressed it "fired on Fort Sumpter" his subsequent conduct had in a fashion belied his vehemence of pronunciamento. Now his artillery of resource was silent. Perhaps the weariness and heightened pallor of the woman's face, which gave it an ethereal quality, made an appeal upon the chivalry his postulates denied.
This afternoon the entire landscape carried a tuneful message and a brilliant sparkle and play of colors. It was a day for peace and laughter, rather than for heart-bruising discussion—and they were still young enough to seize upon and avail themselves of such respites.
Farquaharson laid aside the manuscript of an unfinished novel, with which Conscience had been assisting him as critic and amanuensis, and let his eyes dwell on her face.
She was wearing a smock of rose-colored silk which fell like drapery, rather than mere clothing, about her and seemed to kindle a delicate echo of its pinkness in the ivory of her cheeks. For a little while the author forgot his work.
"Dearest," he said suddenly, and though he couched his words in form and voice of the whimsical they held the essence of entire sincerity, "I hate to seem unduly impressionable or sentimental—but there's something rather marvelous about you. You'd make a man—even a hardened one—want to go down on his knees before you in worship and at the same time you'd make a timid one want to dare hellfire to take you in his arms. In short, you're a secret and a riddle: an enticement and a sobering inspiration."