"My glamour would dwindle. I brush my teeth just like anyone else; and sometimes I burp."
"You haven't seen me without my make-up."
He inspected her again critically.
"I might survive it."
"And I'm lazy and untidy and I have expensive tastes."
"I," he said, "am not a respectable citizen. I shoot people and I open safes. I'm not popular. People send me bombs through the mail, and policemen are always looking for an excuse to arrest me. There isn't any peace and stability where I'm around."
"I'm not so peaceful and stable myself," she said seriously. "But I saw you once, and I've never forgotten you. I've read. everything about you — as much as there is to read. I simply knew I was going to meet you one day, even if it took years and years. That's all. Well, now I've met you, and you're stuck with it."
She could say things like that, in a way that nobody else could have said them and gotten away with it. The Saint had met most kinds of coquetry and invitation, and he had had to dodge the anthropophagous pursuit of a few hungry women; but this was none of those things. She looked him in the face when she said it, and she said it straight out as if it was the most natural thing to say because it was just the truth; but there was a little speck of laughter in each of her eyes at the same time, as if she wondered what he would think of it and didn't care very much what he thought.
He said: "You're very frank."
"You won't believe me," she said, "but I never told anyone anything like this before in my life. So if you think I'm completely crazy you're probably right."