“Offer me a taxi, for I’m tired of walking,” she said, and when they were seated side by side she asked: “What is your offer?”
“I offer you all that you require to get out of this country and to keep you out for a few years, until this old Frog busts—as he will bust! I’ve been watching you for a long time, and, if you won’t consider it an impertinence, I like you. There’s something about you that is very attractive—don’t stop me, because I’m not going to get fresh with you, or suggest that you’re the only girl that ever made tobacco taste like molasses—I like you in a kind of pitying way, and you needn’t get offended at that either. And I don’t want to see you hurt.”
He was very serious; she recognized his sincerity, and the word of sarcasm that rose to her lips remained unuttered.
“Are you wholly disinterested?” she asked.
“So far as you are concerned, I am,” he replied. “There is going to be an almighty smash, and it is more than likely that you’ll get in the way of some of the flying pieces.”
She did not answer him at once. What he had said merely intensified her own uneasiness.
“I suppose you know I’m married?”
“I guessed that,” he answered. “Take your husband with you. What are you going to do with that boy?”
“You mean Ray Bennett?”
It was curious that she made no attempt to disguise either her position or the part that she was playing. She wondered at herself after she was home. But Joshua Broad had a compelling way, and she never dreamt of deceiving him.