“Then I’m not your brother?” he said at last.
Again that curious expression, half contemptuous, half tender, came into Inez’ face.
“Fancy that!” she said lightly, slipping from her place on the arm of Ryland’s chair.
Ryland, catching the ironical note in her voice, looked up questioningly, but Inez only returned to her original attack.
“Now then, what about this Birdcage lady?” she asked. “It wasn’t Julie Vermont was it? I thought you were off her.”
Ryland shook his head impatiently.
“Oh dry up about her,” he said.
Slightly changing her tactics, Inez gradually coaxed the story out of him. It was a curious story; in the first place he did not know who the girl was, nor where she lived, but he was none the less very much in love with her (he always thought that—for a month or two). It appeared that about ten days previously he had been leaving his rooms in Abingdon Street when he noticed, just outside his door, a girl struggling to change the back tire of a Morris saloon car. A glance had been enough to show him that she was attractive and therefore a fitting subject for a good deed. He had offered his services, which were accepted, and—in not too great a hurry and with a maximum of mutual help—the task had been accomplished. An offer of a wash and brush up had followed (fortunately Ryland had a well-kept bath-room, with lavatory basin, clothes-brush, etc., that Inez sometimes used when she came to see him) and was laughingly accepted. The girl was uncommonly pretty—prettier than he had at first realized—with dark hair, large dark eyes, and small, well-kept hands. The whole interlude having lasted nearly half an hour, she had offered to drive Ryland wherever he had been going—she herself not being in any hurry. Ryland had made a feeble attempt to pretend that he was going to lunch alone and tried to induce her to join him, but she had laughingly pointed out the time—it was half past eleven—and firmly dropped him at the “Doorstep” Club—but not before he had extracted a promise from her to have tea with him at Rumpelmayer’s on the following day.
“That was a good tea, as teas go,” said Ryland, reminiscently, “but the drive afterwards was much better. We went out in her car to Richmond Hill and sat there, looking out over the river—devilish romantic in the twilight, I can tell you. We must have been there an hour or more.” Ryland was smiling now; the memory of that evening had momentarily blotted out much that had happened since.
“You sat there for an hour or more,” said Inez, “talking about—what?”