“Pardon me, Miss Danton; I must stay.”
“Against my wishes?”
“Certainly not; but with your approval. If, when I came here to act as your butler, I could have foretold the exact time when your enemies were to make a move, there would not have arisen the necessity for me to play the part I have taken at all. I could simply have appeared here, hidden myself in a closet until the villains announced themselves, as they do in plays, met them in front of the footlights, so to speak, and choked them into submission to the applause of the galleries. Unfortunately, this is not a play.”
“It seems strangely like a farce to me.”
“God grant it may not prove to be a tragedy.”
“I wish you would not take things so funereally, Mr. Carter,” she said, with some show of petulance.
“How can I take it otherwise when I know the seriousness of the situation?”
“But do you know it? Is it not rather due to your imagination and to your—your—what shall I say?”
“Say what you started to say and did not wish to complete.”
“One would suppose you could tell what that was.”