He lifted his hat. "Adachi-san." But she was too eager to pay heed to mere matters of courtesy. "Mr. Kent," for a moment he felt the pressure of a small hand on his sleeve, "he lied to you."
He was struck utterly dumb, could but stare at her amazed. His first reaction was one of disappointment. As he had hastened down to see her, he had had no conscious thought of what he might expect. His whole mind had been concentrated on the question as to whether he had really been right in thinking that she wished to see him clandestinely, out of the hearing of the Viscount. Now he realized that he must, subconsciously, have expected something quite different, something in the lines of furtherance of purely personal intimacy. And here she was evidently not interested in him at all as an individual, but had some obscure purpose connected with the political issue. He had to wrench his mind into adjustment to this entirely new aspect of the matter, as he stood, hat still in his hand, gaping at her.
"What? Lied about what? Do tell me——"
But her eagerness had disappeared, though the excitement remained as her eyes flickered up and down the street. "No. I can't tell you, not now. I must hurry back to the office. The Viscount will miss me. Good-by."
She ran swiftly from him before he could even try to retain her.
"Well, I'll be hanged!"
Again he found the park a handy retreat where he might enter and ruminate undisturbed over the tangle of events of the last half-hour, the statement of the Viscount, the inexplicable mystery of this girl's sudden injection of herself into the game as one of the players where she should ordinarily have remained even less than a mere pawn; the bearing that her taking a hand therein might have on the solution of his problem.
As he reasoned it out, he decided that, as he had gained nothing from the interview, he might, by some chance whim of fortune, have made a still greater gain by the new element added by the girl's appearance in the play. Apparently she knew something. She might know a great deal. And evidently she wished to give him information, to put him straight. Why? It was not because she took any great personal interest in him; he was sure of that; her manner had shown no trace whatever of the element of individual attraction. Still, what her reason might be was, after all, a secondary consideration; it was what she knew, what she could tell him, evidently wished to tell him, that mattered. He must follow up this chance-sent opportunity. Of course, he must see her again. She must expect it. It might be worse. Here he had wished to enter into some closer relation with her, friendship, intimate association, and now the chance had come; although from an amazingly unexpected angle. It even fitted right in with his work—but—as he thought it over, the keenness of the feeling of good luck faded. It was too romantic, melodramatic. He looked upon his work in the cold, keen light of the professional, as a gatherer of facts, of news, prosaic, practical, disdaining the blatant injection therein of the personal element of the "trained seals." He might enjoy betimes coloring the drabness of everyday existence by trying to apply tints of romance—he had been rather inclined to do so lately; possibly it was the glamor of newness of a strange land, or a reflection from his association with Karsten,—but work and romance were inconsistent, conflicting. He did not want to mix personal relation with this girl with business, make use of her as a tool for prying into the secrets of Japanese officialdom. Such use of women might be practical, it had undoubtedly served in many cases, but it was distasteful to him, repellent. But, on the other hand, what could he do? The girl herself wished it. He was not stalking her, treacherously, with cold calculation, trying to inveigle her into an affair of affections with the intention of making her serve his purposes. It seemed rather as if she thought that, in some undiscernible way, he might serve hers. He did not know what to make of it. At one moment he would be pleased, exultant even, at this element of intense interest injected into his existence, and the next he would be mystified, perplexed, impatient at his inability to see the road before him.
Women! It seemed as if one must ever become entangled, somehow, in the insinuating meshes of their ubiquitous activities.