'No, thank you,' she said curtly.
'You don't trust me?'
'Why should I? White may or may not be Sam Fisher. I shall be on my guard, and I thank you for telling me. But why should I trust you? It all hangs together. You told me you were engaged to be married. You come here on an errand which no man would undertake except for a woman, and a woman with whom he was very much in love. There is that letter, imploring you to steal the boy. I know what a man will do for a woman he is fond of. Why should I trust you?'
'There is this. You forget that I had the opportunity to steal Ogden if I had wanted to. I had got him away to London. But I brought him back. I did it because you had told me what it meant to you.'
She hesitated, but only for an instant. Suspicion was too strong for her.
'I don't believe you. You brought him back because this man whom you call Fisher got to know of your plans. Why should you have done it because of me? Why should you have put my interests before Mrs Ford's? I am nothing to you.'
For a moment a mad impulse seized me to cast away all restraint, to pour out the unspoken words that danced like imps in my brain, to make her understand, whatever the cost, my feelings towards her. But the thought of my letter to Cynthia checked me. That letter had been the irrevocable step. If I was to preserve a shred of self-respect I must be silent.
'Very well,' I said, 'good night.' And I turned to go.
'Peter!'
There was something in her voice which whirled me round, thrilling, despite my resolution.