I turned from the window and moved back, wondering what he was going to say. She was looking again at her purse, snapping and unsnapping the clasp.
"How can you do that?" she asked.
"Haven't you read in the papers that Barker's been seen in Philadelphia?"
"Ah yes," she murmured, her glance still on the purse. "But nobody's found him yet."
"Give us time—give us time. These vanishing gentlemen like a change of air. They don't stay long under our hospitable flag. Their goal is Canada."
For a moment she had no reply. You could see it, you could see the effort with which she held her statue-calm pose, but a deep breath lifted her breast and the edge of her teeth showed on her underlip.
"Canada," said the old man with a comfortable roll in his big chair, "is our modern American equivalent of the medieval sanctuary."
She'd got her nerve back—I never saw such grit. She gave him a smile, not jolly like his, but defiant.
"Of course," she said, "a sort of Cave of Adullum." Then she rose and looking at him from under her eyelids added, "But if a man's clever enough to get to the Cave of Adullum I should think he'd be too clever to stay there."
She turned and took her coat from the chair back. George made a jump to help her and the old man heaved himself up, breaking out with renewed apologies for the trouble he'd given her. They were like people separating after a social function, he bland and courteous, she gracious and deprecating.