“I’m afraid I do not quite understand you,” I said at last in a frozen voice, “but if it is that you do not wish me to boast of having made your acquaintance—I can assure you that you need have no fear.”
Even his hardened pelt was pierced at last, though he tried to hide the fact under a sardonic grin that did not become him in the least. He threw back his rag of black hair—a sign of battle I was beginning to recognise.
“Hardly that. I was merely proffering a little friendly advice, but I remember now that you do not take kindly to advice—or you would not be here.” He grinned again, and I flushed with anger. After the terrors of the past night to fling the advice of people like Elizabet von Stohl into my teeth!
“I believe myself perfectly capable of minding my own affairs,” I said. “Further, I very much resent your inference that people would dare to talk scandal about me.”
“Evidently you do not know people as well as I do.” I merely looked over his head. “Certainly you will allow that I know my own reputation better.”
There was an opening for a dart, and I flung one with all my might.
“That is a matter that does not interest me. I do not even know your name, and probably never shall.”
But do you think that crushed him? No! “Oh, you will hear it,” he said with his careless smile, “‘blown back upon the breeze of fame,’ perhaps—of a kind. In any case we are bound to meet again.”
“Oh, will it be necessary?” I said, driven to open rudeness by his imperturbability, which I considered very much like insolence. “Will it really be necessary if I thank you now for—for the services you have been so extremely kind as to render me?” His withers remained unwrung. “You cannot escape meeting even your open enemies in this country. And it will indeed be necessary to me, even if I thank you now for the most wonderful night of my life.”
Without waiting for any newly-barbed darts I might or might not have had ready, he swiftly departed, leaving one last hardy blue smile in my eyes. A moment later he was slithering across the river on the screeching, wriggling wire.