"How?" he demanded blankly.
"You will have it that I must surrender my only advantage—my incognito. If I tell you how I happen to know who you are, I must tell you who I am. Immediately you will lose interest in me, because I'm really not at all advanced; I doubt if I should understand your book if I had to read it."
"Which Heaven forfend! But why," he insisted mercilessly, "do you wish me to be interested in you?"
She flushed becomingly at this and acknowledged the touch with a rueful, smiling glance. But, "Because I'm interested in you," she admitted openly.
"And … why?"
"Are you hardened to such adventures?" She nodded in the direction the babu had taken. "Are you accustomed to being treated with extraordinary respect by stray Bengalis and accepting tokens from them? Is romance commonplace to you?"
"Oh," he said, disappointed, "if it's only the adventure—! Of course, that's easily enough explained. This half-witted mammoth—don't ask me how he came to be here—thought he recognised in me some one he had known in India. Let's have a look at this token-thing."
He disclosed the bronze box and let her take it in her pretty fingers.
"It must have a secret spring," she concluded, after a careful inspection.
"I think so, but…."