"All the better. I ought not to lend myself in any way to making you possible future trouble."
"I do not understand you, Miss Macklin."
He sat up suddenly on the bench to look at her more sharply. There was an underlying, but important, meaning to her speech.
"I know you do not understand," she rejoined gently. She sighed. "I must make you clearly see just who I am and the risk you run in associating with me."
"The risk I run!"
He uttered the words in both amazement and ridicule.
"You do not quite understand, Captain Latham," she repeated in the same gentle tone.
There was no raillery in her voice now. She was altogether serious. Her eyes, luminous, yet darkly unfathomable, were held full upon his face. He felt rather than saw that she was under a mental strain. The revelation she was about to make throbbed in her voice when she spoke again.
"You do not quite understand. Sellers gives girls work in his restaurant who could by no possibility offer proper references, girls from the Protectory, from homes, as they are called; some, even, who have served jail sentences. I had been two years in the St. Andrew's School for Girls when I went to work for Sellers."