She came straight at it.
"You know I can't let you alone."
He laughed. "Well, isn't that why we're here at last—that you may dictate your terms?"
"I have. Didn't you get my letter?"
"Oh, indeed I did. Haven't I obeyed it? Haven't I kept away from your house? Have I tried to approach you?"
"Haven't you, though?" she threw at him accusingly.
"Ah," he deprecated, "you came to me. I was down in the garden."
She looked at him through his persiflage wistfully, searchingly. "But there were other things in that letter."
"There were?" He regarded her with grave surprise. Oh, how she mistrusted his gravity! "Why, to be sure there were things—things that you didn't mean—one thing above all others you couldn't mean, that you want me to drop out when the game is half done, to slink away and leave it all like this—abandon you and my Idol so to each other! My dear, for what do you take me?"
She burst out. "But can't you see the danger?"