"Listen," she began. "I do not ask you to tell me anything more about that night—I do not wish to hear anything. Tell me instead exactly what it is that you want from me!"
"I want nothing more nor less," he answered gently, "than permission to be your friend and to possess a little more of your confidence. I want you to end this mystery which surrounds the things of which I have spoken."
"And supposing," she said thoughtfully, "supposing I find that my obligations to other people forbid me to discuss these matters any more with you?"
"I can only hope," he answered, "that you will not feel like that. Remember that these things must have some bearing upon the disappearance of Mr. Weatherley."
She rose to her feet with a little shrug of the shoulders and walked up and down the room for several moments, smoking and humming a light tune to herself. Arnold watched her, struggling all the time against the reluctant admiration with which she always inspired him. She seemed to read in his eyes what was passing in his mind, for when at last she came to a standstill she stood by his side and laughed at him, with faintly upraised eyebrows, the cigarette smoke curling from her lips.
"And it was for a luncheon such as this," she protested, "that I wore my new muslin gown and came all the way from the country. I expected compliments at least. Perhaps I even hoped," she whispered, leaning a little towards him, with a smile upon her lips,—half mirthful, half provocative,—"that I might have turned for a moment that wonderfully hard head of yours."
Arnold rose abruptly to his feet.
"You treat men as though they were puppets," he muttered.
"And you speak of puppets," she murmured, "as though theirs was a most undesirable existence. Have you never tried to be a puppet, Arnold?"
He stepped a little further back still and gripped the back of the chair, but she kept close to him.