He paused.
"Mr. West!" she said again, her voice half-imperious, half-pleading.
Reluctantly he faced round. She was waiting for him with a little smile quivering about her mouth. Her grey eyes met his with perfect composure.
"I want to know," she said, in her softest drawl, "if it is for my sake or your own that you regret this renewal of acquaintance."
"For yours, Miss Mortimer," he answered grimly.
"That's very kind of you," she rejoined. "And why?"
Again he gave that slight lift of the shoulders that she remembered so well.
"You know the proverb about touching pitch?"
"Some people like pitch," said Cynthia.
"Not clean people," threw back West.