Alice started to her feet, and Lloyd noticed, as she faced him, that the pupils of her eyes widened and then grew small as if from fright or violent emotion.
"Why do you say that? What makes you think there is a mystery about me?" she demanded, trying vainly to hide her agitation.
"Now don't get upset—please don't!" soothed Kittredge. "If there isn't anything, just say so, and if there is, what's the matter with telling a chap who loves you and worships you and whose love wouldn't change for fifty mysteries—what's the matter with telling him all about it?"
"Are you sure your love wouldn't change?" she asked, still trembling.
"Did yours change when they told you things about me? Did it change when they arrested me and put me in prison? Yes, by Jove, it did change, it grew stronger, and that's the way mine would change, that's the only way."
He spoke so earnestly and with such a thrill of fondness that Alice was reassured, and giving him her hand with a happy little gesture, she said: "I know, dear. You see, I love you so much that—if anything should come between us, why—it would just kill me."
"Nothing will come between us," he said simply, and then after a pause: "So there is a mystery."
"I'm—I'm afraid so."
"Ah, I knew it. I figured it out from a lot of little things. That's all I've had to do here, and—for instance, I said to myself: 'How the devil does she happen to speak English without any accent?' You can't tell me that the cousin of a poor wood carver in Belgium would know English as you do. It's part of the mystery, eh?"
"Why—er," she stammered, "I have always known English."