"It is unpardonable, of course, Miss Treharne," said Jesse, with a clearing of the throat in an attempt to sweep away his huskiness. "But my madness to see you, the hopelessness of trying to see you, alone, in any other way—" He brought his sentence to a finish with a gesture meant to emphasize the excusableness of his position.
"Therefore you have sought to entrap me?" said Louise, with no trace of scorn in her tone; her contempt for him was quite beyond such a manifestation of loathing; she asked the question as if really astonished to discover that a man would do such a thing.
"What other method could I employ save a sort of strategy?" asked Jesse, evading her gaze. "Knowing that I was under the ban of your unreasonable dislike, that you would refuse to receive me, and wretched, despairing, under the constant castigation of your prejudice—what else could I do? What else could any man do who found himself in a state of desperation from his love for a woman?"
"Say anything but that, I beg of you," replied Louise, experiencing a surge of disgust at the man's effrontery in professing love in such a situation. "I have no reason to expect anything savoring of manliness from you, of course; but you might at least spare yourself the humiliation—if you can be humiliated—of seeming ridiculous."
"I expected harsh words from you, which, of course, is tantamount to confessing that I deserve them," said Jesse. "But I think we shall have a better understanding. Won't you be seated?"
"I would have credited you for knowing better than to ask me that," replied Louise. She stepped to the door by which she had entered, tried the knob, and of course found that the door was locked. Jesse, watching her, gradually resumed his attempt at the debonair manner. All of the odds were in his favor in this adventure. He could not see where he stood a chance to lose. Therefore, according to the smooth argument of cowardice, there was no reason, he considered, why he should continue his air of deference.
"You did not suppose that, having been to somewhat adroit pains to get you here, I would make it so easy for you to walk out without, at least, a little interchange of ideas?" he asked her, with coolly lifting brows, when she turned from the door.
She noticed his change of tone, and was conscious that she preferred it to his manner of fawning self-exculpation.
"Make your mind easy as to that. I have told you that I expect nothing whatever of you that befits a man," she replied with a coldness of tone from which he inwardly recoiled far more than if she had poured out upon him an emotional torrent of rebuke.
For a moment Jesse, studying her, was visited by the suggestion that perhaps, after all, Louise Treharne was wearing no mask; that she was really that anomaly—as he would have viewed such a one—a woman who was what she professed to be. But he quickly dismissed this prompting as something out of the question. She was merely a proficient in the art of acting, and she was employing her mimetic talent to the utmost upon him—thus he argued it out with himself. Moreover, he decided to give expression to his belief, as being calculated sooner to bring her to the realization that he had her measured.