“You don’t want to tell me,” he said.
“I can’t tell you,” she said again.
He was silent for a space, but she was conscious of his eyes still upon her, and she had an urgent desire to escape from their scrutiny. They were so intent, so unsparing, so full of resolution.
“Someone was up there with you,” he said suddenly.
She clenched her hands to check the swift leap of her heart. “I don’t think you have any right—to press me like this,” she said, her voice very low.
“No right whatever,” he agreed, and in his quiet rejoinder she caught an unexpected note of relief. “I knew you had had a fright, and the Stones have a bad name hereabouts. I wondered what bogey had frightened you. But apparently it wasn’t a bogey this time.”
He smiled a little with the words and she felt the tension relax. She lifted her eyes and met a gleam of friendliness in his.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t a bogey.”
“Perhaps you don’t believe in them,” said Arthur Dermot.
She hesitated, remembering the eyes that had glared at her through the nut-trees, and then wondering within herself if they had been a dream. He went on with scarcely a pause.