He tried to smile. It was not a success. And Riki suddenly drew a deep breath and looked at him in a new fashion.
"Ken's right," she said softly. "He says you can't get conceited. You're not satisfied with yourself even now, are you?" She smiled. "But what I like is that you aren't really smart. A woman can make you do things. I have!"
He looked at her uneasily. She grinned.
"I, even I, can at least pretend to myself that I helped bring this about! If I hadn't said please change the facts that are so annoying, and if I hadn't said you were big and strong and clever.... I'm going to tell myself for the rest of my life that I helped make you do it!"
Bordman swallowed.
"I'm afraid," he said, "that it won't work again."
She cocked her head on one side.
"No?"
He stared at her apprehensively. And then with a bewildering change of emotional reaction, he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. She stamped her foot.
"You're horrible!" she cried. "Here I came in, and—and if you think you can get me kidnaped to safety without even telling me that you 'rather like' me, as you told my brother, or that I'm 'pretty wonderful—'"