"I need no breakfast, thanks! I want no attendant!"
"You must have someone," said Saxham brusquely.
"I must have your answer," she said in a tone quite new to him. "What is your secret purpose? What are you hiding from me in that closed hand?"
He moved his left hand slightly, undoing the fingers and giving a glimpse of the empty palm.
"Not that hand. The other!" She pointed to the clenched right. How tall she had grown, and how womanly! "Love has done this!" was his aching thought. She seemed a princess of faëry, fresh from a bath of magic waters. Her very gait was changed, her every gesture seemed new. Purpose and decision and quiet self-control breathed from her; her voice had tones in it unheard of him before. Her eyes were radiant as he had never yet seen them, golden stars, centred and rimmed with night, shining in a pale glory that was her face....
"All that for the other man! Well, let him have it!" thought Saxham, and involuntarily glanced at his clenched right hand.
"Please open it and show me what you have there!" she begged him.
Her tones were full of pleading music. His face hardened grimly to withstand. His muscular fingers closed in a vice-like grip over what he held. But she moved to him with a whisper of soft trailing garments, and took the shut hand in both her own. She bent her exquisite head and kissed it, and Saxham's fingers of iron were no more than wax. Something clicked in his throat as they opened, that was like the turning of a rusty lock. And the little blue phial, with the yellow poison-label, gave up his deadly intention to her eyes. She cried out and snatched it, and flung it away from her. It fell soundlessly on the soft carpet, and rolled under a chair.
"Owen! You would have ... done that!..."
Divine reproach was to her face. He snarled: