"I will, but not to-night." She drew her hands across her eyes and forehead. "You are not asking merely as the artist now?" She knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it.
"A man who is an artist asks, and he wishes to be a friend to that woman, to do her any service possible."
"Who can tell when she might need befriending?"
He would not question further. She had said all she could until she knew who the stranger was.
"I must go in," she said. "It is late."
"Tell me one thing. I want it for my picture—as a key to the mind of the girl. What did she say at that painful meeting in the woods—to the man?"
Mrs. Detlor looked at him as if she would read him through and through. Presently she drew a ring from her finger slowly and gave it to him, smiling bitterly.
"Read inside. That is what she said."
By the burning end of his cigar he read, "You told a lie."
At another hotel a man sat in a window looking out on the esplanade. He spoke aloud.