"Isn't it possible that Theodore borrowed them, temporarily, and smuggled them back when he came?"
The startled look was intensified in her eyes as she met his gaze.
"He must have done it in some such way!" she said. "I thought at the time, when I ran in to get them, they were not exactly as I had left them, earlier. And I gave them to you for fear he'd steal them!"
This was some light, at least. Garrison needed more.
"Why couldn't you have told me all about them earlier?"
She looked at him beseechingly. Some way, it seemed to them both they had known each other for a very long time, and much had been swept away that must have stood as a barrier between mere client and agent.
"I felt I'd rather not," she confessed. "Forgive me, please. They do not belong to me.
"Not yours?" said Garrison. "What do you mean?"
"I advanced some money on them—to some one very dear," she answered.
"Please don't probe into that, if you can help it."
His jealousy rose again, with his haunting suspicion of a man in the background with whom he would yet have to deal. He knew that here he had no rights, but in other directions he had many.