She was looking at him now, but with no meaning in her eyes.
"That's why," he continued, "I couldn't trust it to say how ... how grateful I was for you."
"For me?" she questioned.
"You see I can't trust it yet," he pleaded ruefully. "Yes, for you: for everything about you that's so delightful and unlooked for; the charm——"
At that her eyes stopped him. He had looked up suddenly as though he felt the blaze of them hot upon his face.
"Am I in the show-pen?" she said quietly.
That settled it, he felt. Well, she had every right to her challenge; he had put it into her mouth.
It was characteristic, curiously enough, of his fortuitous nature, that, despite the unedifying fashion in which his intention had hitherto hung and veered—nosing, as it were, the wind of opportunity for a flaw that suited it—he put his helm over now with irrevocable decision.
"You've cause to ask that," he said with a smile, "since I left out the only reason that seems to make admiration speakable."
"Yes?" she asked simply. "What is it?"