"With any other woman I would understand that," he said, without shifting his gaze.
"Perhaps I am simpler than you think?"
"Let's go in to dinner!" he said abruptly.
He went to the curtain and drew it aside deferentially. She went past him quickly, watching him from under her eyelashes, choosing that seat at the table which would give her quick retreat in case of need. The waiter, bald and correctly vacant of expression, arrived after a discreet knock, and with the swinging of the door came a sudden burst of laughter from an arriving party. She waved away the proffered cocktail.
"Nothing?" he asked.
"At such an important interview? Of course not!"
He raised his glass to her honor, and she nodded.
"You don't look so terrible, after all," she said, examining him with a critical smile; and to herself she said disdainfully, as she had said another time: "If this is a dangerous man, what is it makes him dangerous?"
But this query was not simply of amusement. The seriousness of life had so obtruded itself upon her, in the last preparatory weeks, that she wanted to know everything, to have before her in detail that existence which could depend on his soft hands and wearied eyes.
"So I puzzle you very much?"