“Because I need you. I want your advice, perhaps your help. He—he came back again.”
“When?”
“Last Saturday.”
“And I left here Thursday,” he smiled. “Joan, you have a spy in your house who reports my movements and yours to Slotman. No sooner was I gone from here than he was advised, and so he came. Now do you understand why I am here. I knew that man would come. He needs money, there is the magnet of your gold. He will never leave you in peace while he thinks you alone and unprotected, but while I was here you were safe, for he is a very coward.”
“And that was why you came, knowing that he—”
She paused. “And I—I cut you in the street, Hugh.”
“And hurt yourself by doing it,” he said softly.
“Yes.” She bowed her head, and then suddenly she thrust the softness and the tenderness from her, for they must be dangerous things when she loved this man as she did, and was promised to another.
“I must not forget that—I am—” She paused.
“Promised to another man? But you will never carry out that promise, Joan—you cannot, my dear! You cannot, because you belong to me. But it was not of that that you came to speak. Only remember what I have said. It is true.”