"My dear Bunny, I should hope not."
"But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if you'd tried."
Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But neither would he ape an alien humility.
"It wouldn't have been the game, Bunny—won or lost—Teddy or no Teddy: And yet," he added, with pensive candour, "we were getting on like a semi-detached house on fire! I burnt my fingers, I don't mind telling you; if I hadn't been what I am, Bunny, I might have taken my courage in all ten of 'em, and 'put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'"
"I wish you had," I whispered, as he studied his paper upside down.
"Why, Bunny? What rot you do talk!" he cried, but only with the skin-deep irritation of a half-hearted displeasure.
"She's the only woman I ever met," I went on unguardedly, "who was your mate at heart—in pluck—in temperament!"
"How the devil do you know?" cried Raffles, off his own guard now, and staring in my guilty face.
But I have never denied that I could emulate his presence of mind upon occasion.
"You forget what a lot we saw of each other last Thursday in the rain."