"You mean Terry."
She said it without change of tone or expression, with the same happy smile curling up the corners of her uncruel mouth. It was disconcerting to have his private humiliations referred to so frankly, as though they were fitting subjects for casual conversation. But, after all, he reminded himself, his business there was to discuss her equally private affairs. He was hardly in a position to resent anything she might say. It was a duel, and she had drawn first
blood. He was quick to see that her purpose in introducing Terry was to gain an advantage while she postponed the inevitable discussion of Adair.
She didn't give him a chance to reply. "I know all about you and Terry," she continued, "and about Braithwaite, too, for the matter of that. Perhaps why Terry evades you is because she isn't one of your really big things. You may have mistaken her for a big thing. If she is one of your truly big things, you'll get her. You're one of the few men who get all that they desire."
It was possible that she was trying to flatter him; nevertheless, against his will, the certainty of her way of talking impressed him. "What makes you think that I get everything that I desire?"
She laughed and snuggled closer into the cushions. "I can't put it into words. I just know by looking at you. You have the air."
"Then what makes you say that Terry may not be one of my big things?"
She glanced up at him amused. "I almost made you angry when I said that.—Do you really want to know? I said it because I don't think that she is one of your big things and, what's more, you don't think that she is either. Now I have made you angry—— But you don't—not the sane you, who was and is and will be to-morrow—the you who'll outlive this disappointment."
He was at one and the same time intrigued and offended by the turn the conversation had taken. His memory groped back to the first conception he had had of this woman—the woman who tricked mar
ried men, who used scented note-paper, who interpreted thoughts before they were uttered and forestalled actions before they had been planned—the woman whom he had been instructed to buy off with a price. What was he doing discussing his love-affair with such as her?