“Come and sit down,” said Christine. “Here's a chair, and here are cigarettes and there are matches. Now!”
But, for once, K. declined the chair. He stood in front of the fireplace and looked down at her, his head bent slightly to one side.
“I wonder if you would like to do a very kind thing,” he said unexpectedly.
“Make you coffee?”
“Something much more trouble and not so pleasant.”
Christine glanced up at him. When she was with him, when his steady eyes looked down at her, small affectations fell away. She was more genuine with K. than with anyone else, even herself.
“Tell me what it is, or shall I promise first?”
“I want you to promise just one thing: to keep a secret.”
“Yours?”
Christine was not over-intelligent, perhaps, but she was shrewd. That Le Moyne's past held a secret she had felt from the beginning. She sat up with eager curiosity.