'You need not!' Zoë laughed carelessly. 'I know what you are going to say. Shall I save you the trouble?'
'I do not see how you can guess what it is——'
'Oh, easily! You do not wish your friends to see me and you are going to order me not to look out of the window when they come. Is that it?'
'Yes—more or less——' Zeno was surprised.
'Yes, that is it,' laughed Zoë. 'But it is quite useless, sir. I shall most certainly look out of the window, unless you lock me up in another room; and as for your doing that, I will yield only to force!'
She laughed again, much amused at the dilemma in which she was placing him. And indeed, he did not at first know how to answer her declaration of independence.
'I cannot imagine why you should be so anxious to show yourself to people you do not know,' he said. 'Or perhaps you fancy they may be friends—you think that if they recognise you—but that is absurd. I have told you that if you have friends in the world you may go to them, and you say you have none.'
Zoë's tone changed again and became girlishly petulant.
'It is nothing but curiosity, of course!' she answered. 'I want to see the people you like. Is that so unnatural? In a whole month I have never seen one of your friends—'
'I have not many. But such as I have, I value, and I do not care to let them get a mistaken impression of me, or of the way I live.'