"The use?" She let his hand go. Napier received the impression that the lowering of her tone was less attributable to two or three other absorbed groups seated about the great room, than to some sudden rush of feeling that clouded her voice. "You are safe here."
He looked at her for a moment. Deliberately he shook off the impression her tone more than her words had made. "No,"—he shook his head,—"I'm far from safe where you can ring me up."
"You don't like me to ring you up?"
He could have laughed if he'd been less oppressed. "It's no use. I see I can't do anything to protect you. I might as well be on the other side of the world."
"No! no!" she protested with an eagerness that caught her breath. "Besides, you are very far from sure of getting to the other side of the world as things are."
His look of angry scorn, for the contingency implied, agitated her.
"Oh, do believe me! This is a thing I know more about than you do."
"It isn't a knowledge you should have," he said sternly.
She swept the rebuke aside in her alarm. "Don't imagine," she said in that strained undertone—"don't imagine the warnings in the papers aren't serious. It is one of the things I couldn't write. Why didn't you come and see me and my mother last Thursday?"
He was aware of being as little able now, to make idle conversation with Nan, as he had been that night, after Taylor had barred all use of the Gull Island evidence. He dropped out mumbled phrases, "Unexpected business," having "to go to Washington," and was there anything else she hadn't been able to write?