Instead of pulling it, she released it, still staring at him, and she returned slowly to her chair.
"You are a strange man," she murmured, "and a brave one. There is not another who would dare to defy me as you have done."
"Perhaps there is not another who has so much at stake," he replied quietly, but with perfect truth, as the reader knows.
Again she knit her brows in perplexity; again the detective knew that she was concentrating her mind upon that incident at the prefecture, trying with all her power to recall the merest detail of it.
Nick remembered that his name had been mentioned aloud at that time; he recalled the fact that Goron, in rising to shake hands with him, had called him by name plainly enough. It was evident that she also remembered that much of the facts, and was now straining every energy she possessed to recall what that name was.
And while she thought so deeply, her face gradually assumed an expressionless cast. She closed her lips firmly together. Her eyes became sombre. She seemed oblivious of his presence, and of her surroundings. For the moment she was back again in Paris, at the prefecture, in the presence of Goron, five years ago.
After a little, without another change of expression, she shrugged her shoulders, and rose from her chair, and then, with an assumption of carelessness, she passed from the room upon the piazza, saying as she went:
"Come. We will not bother any more about this for the present. We will take up the subject again another time, after we have both had opportunity to think it over. If you care for a cigar, Dago, there are some in that cupboard yonder. Help yourself."
Now, it happened that Nick did care for a cigar. He had not had one in many a day, but had forced himself to be content with an old pipe. The prospect of a cigar was enticing, and so he took her at her word, and helped himself—turning his back to her as he did so, and so he did not see the strange smile which crossed her face as she passed through the door upon the piazza.
He was a bit puzzled by this sudden change in her attitude and manner. He could not exactly account for it. Had she remembered? He could not tell.