With a book for shield against the lamp she took the chair he offered her. "Aren't they extraordinary?" she said. He questioned.
"Who is extraordinary? Do you mean the card-sharpers? Not at all. It's meat and drink to them. It's we who are out of the common: daintier feeders."
"No," she said, "it's not quite that. James's strong point is that he can keep his feelings in separate pigeonholes. I'm simply quaking with fear, because my imagination has flooded me. But he won't think about the risks he's running—until he is running them."
Urquhart had been looking at her until he discovered that James had his eye upon her too. He crossed his leg and clasped the knee of it; he looked fixedly at the ceiling as he spoke.
"I should like to know what it is you're afraid of," he said in a carefully literal but carefully inaudible tone. He did that sort of thing very well.
Lucy was pinching her lip. "All sorts of things," she said. "I suffer from presentiments. I think that you or James may be hurt, for instance—"
"Do you mean," said Urquhart—as if he had been saying "Where did you get this tobacco?"—"Do you mean that you're afraid we may hurt each other?"
She hung her head deeply.
"You needn't be. If you can fear that you must forget my promise." He saw her eyes clear, then cloud again before her difficulties.
"James, at least," she said, "has never done you any harm." It was awfully true. But it annoyed him. Damn James!