“I have touched nothing in the house but what you have given me.”
“Lena!” he cried.
He was painfully affected by this disclaimer of a charge which he had not made. It was what a servant might have said—an inferior open to suspicion—or, at any rate, a stranger. He was angry at being so wretchedly misunderstood; disenchanted at her not being instinctively aware of the place he had secretly given her in his thoughts.
“After all,” he said to himself, “we are strangers to each other.”
And then he felt sorry for her. He spoke calmly:
“I was about to say, are you sure you have no reason to think that the Chinaman has been in this room tonight?”
“You suspect him?” she asked, knitting her eyebrows.
“There is no one else to suspect. You may call it a certitude.”
“You don't want to tell me what it is?” she inquired, in the equable tone in which one takes a fact into account.
Heyst only smiled faintly.