There was a second's pause.
"N—no," said the pretty voice, hesitatingly. "You—you couldn't—of course."
"But please tell me at once," he said, puzzled by this—"have I taken the unforgivable liberty of breaking into your house?"
"My house?" And he caught something like bewildered relief in her voice.
"Why—I—was thinking that I had broken into yours."
Varney laughed, his back against the door.
"If it were, I'm sure I should be able to offer you a light at the least. If it were yours, now that I stop to think—well, perhaps it would be a little eccentric for you to be sitting there in your parlor in the inky dark."
To this there came no reply.
"I suppose you, like me," he continued courteously, "are an unlucky wayfarer who had to choose hastily between trespassing and being drowned."
"Yes."
Inevitably he found himself wondering what this lady who shared his stolen refuge could be like. That she was a lady her voice left no doubt. His eye strained off into the Ethiopian blackness, but could make neither heads nor tails of it.