"What is that?" she asked.
"The dress the maid was wearing that afternoon, and if she wore an apron
I want to see that too."
The contessa fetched them, and for some minutes Quarles examined them closely.
I did not think he had started a theory. I thought the contessa's words had merely stung him into doing something. He had probably come to the conclusion that he had been making rather a fool of himself.
However, he was theoretical enough that night in the empty room at
Chelsea.
"I think the arrest was a mistake, Wigan," he began.
"Surely you are not influenced by the contessa's opinion?"
"Well, she probably knows more about French maids than you do. I am inclined to trust a woman's intuition sometimes. The contessa is delightfully vague. It is part of her great charm, and it is in everything she does and says. She tells you something, but her real meaning you can only guess at. She dances, but the steps she ought to do and doesn't are the ones which really contain the meaning."
"Can she possibly be more vague, dear, than you are at the present moment?" laughed Zena.
"I think this is a case in which one must try to get into the contessa's atmosphere before any result is possible. You will agree, Wigan, that her point of view is peculiar."