"Mustn't I even tell Rosa Mundi?" she said.
His flush deepened as he remembered that she would probably know him by name. She must have known in those far-off Australian days that he was working with all his might to free young Baron from her toils.
He sat in silence till, "Will you tell me something?" whispered Rosemary, leaning nearer.
He stiffened involuntarily. "I don't know."
"Please try!" she urged softly. "I feel sure you can. Why—why don't you like Rosa Mundi?"
He looked at her, and his eyes were steely; but they softened by imperceptible degrees as they met the earnest sweetness of her answering look. "No, I can't tell you that," he said with decision.
But her look held him. "Is it because you don't think she is very good?"
"I can't tell you," he said again.
Still she looked at him, and again there seemed to be in her eyes that expression of a child who has seen life without understanding it. "Perhaps you think I am too young to know good from evil," she said after a moment. "I am not. I have told you I am older than I look, and in some things I am older even than my years. Then, too, I belong to Rosa Mundi. I told you, didn't I? I am her familiar spirit. She has even called me her angel, or her better self. I know a great many things about her, and some of them are very sad. May I tell you some of the things I know?"
He turned his eyes away from her abruptly, with the feeling that he was resisting some curious magnetism. What was there about this child that attracted him? He was not a lover of children. Moreover, she was verging upon womanhood approaching what he grimly termed "the dangerous age."