Instinct—the female fear of the trap—warned Jane to be off, but curiosity held her to the chair. She was human; and this flattery, free of any suggestion of love-making, gave her a warming, 171 pleasurable thrill. Still there was a fly in the amber. Every woman wishes to be credited with hidden fires, to possess equally the power to damn men as well as to save them.
“Has there never been——”
“A woman? Have I not just said there is always a woman?” He was sardonic now. “Mine, seeing me walk, laughed.”
“She wasn’t worth it!”
“No, she wasn’t. But when we are twenty the heart is blind. So Cleigh and the boy don’t speak?”
“Cleigh hasn’t injured you in any way, has he?”
“Injured me? Of course not! I am only forced by circumstance—and an oblique sense of the comic—to make a convenience of him. And by the Lord Harry, it’s up to you to help me out!”
“I?”—bewildered.