After luncheon he again fell back upon the dogged boldness. Unable to contemplate a second plunge into the solitude of the Temple Court offices, he asked and was accorded permission to take Patricia for a country drive in the little car. When the city was left behind, and the small machine was purring steadily northwestward over a road which led to nowhere in particular, Blount put his finger accurately upon the thing which had been building little barriers of silence between them all the way out from town.
"You knew me well enough yesterday to be reasonably certain of what I would do in given circumstances, didn't you, Patricia?" he began abruptly. "To-day you are not so sure about it. Why?"
She laughed lightly, but there was a serious undernote in her voice when she said: "There are moments when you make me wonder if you haven't been dabbling in necromancy, Evan. I was at that very instant telling myself that it wasn't so."
"But you know it is so," he persisted. "Why am I different?"
"I don't know."
"Yet you recognize the fact?"
"Is it a fact?" she queried.
"Yes."
"In what way are you different?"