There was a cloud upon her face. She began to drum with her slim forefingers upon the tablecloth.
"I think that I would rather you did not go on," she said.
He shook his head.
"I must," he declared, fervently. "These things have been in my mind too long. It is not well for our friendship that I should have such thoughts and leave them unuttered. On that very first evening—the first time I ever saw you—you behaved, in a way, strangely. You took me into your little sitting-room and I could see that you were in trouble. Something was happening, or you were afraid that it was going to happen. You sent me to the window to look out and see if any one were watching the house. You remember all that?"
"Yes," she murmured, "I remember."
"There was some one watching it," Arnold went on. "I told you. I saw your lips quiver with fear. Then your husband came in and took you away. You left me there in the room alone. I was to wait for you. While I was there, one of the men, who had been watching, stole up through your garden to the very window. I saw his face. I saw his hand upon the window-sill with that strange ring upon his finger. You have not forgotten?"
"Forgotten!" she repeated. "As though that were possible!"
"Very well," Arnold continued. "Now let me ask you to remember another evening, only last week, the night I dined with your brother. I brought you home from the Empire and we found that your sitting-room had been entered from that same window. The door was locked and we all thought that burglars must be there. I climbed in at the window from the garden. You know what I found."
All the time she seemed to have been making an effort to listen to him unconcernedly. At this point, however, she broke down. She abandoned her attempt at continuing her luncheon. She looked up at him and he could see that she was trembling.
"Don't go on!" she begged; "please don't!"