"This, I must confess," Crawshay murmured, smoothly and mendaciously, "puzzles me. Your idea is, then, that Jocelyn Thew has some hold over them?"
She laughed at him a little contemptuously.
"You are not going to make me believe," she said, "that you are not wise about that. It isn't clever, you know, to treat me as a simpleton."
"I am afraid," he confessed humbly, "that it is I who am the simpleton. You think, then, that the red roses are more emblematic of warfare than of love?"
Nora shrugged her shoulders and was silent for several moments. Her companion changed the subject abruptly, pointed out to her several theatrical celebrities, told her an entertaining story, and talked nonsense until the smile came back to her lips. It was Nora herself who returned to the subject of the Beverleys, reopening it with a certain abruptness which showed that it had never been far from her thoughts.
"See here, Mr. Crawshay," she said, "you seem to me to be wasting a lot of time worrying round a subject, when I don't know whether a straightforward question wouldn't clear it up for you. If you want to know what there is between those three, Jocelyn Thew and the two Beverleys, I don't know that I mind telling you. It's probably what you asked me to dine with you for, anyway."
"My dear Miss Sharey!" Crawshay protested, with genuine earnestness. "I can assure you that I had only one object in asking you to spend the evening with me."
She smiled at him over the glass which she had just raised to her lips.
"And that?"
"The pleasure of talking to you—of being with you."