“If you knew as much about other laws,” began Vera, “as I do about the law—” She broke off and again smiled upon him.
“Then you probably know,” said Winthrop, “that what our excited friend said to you just now is legally quite true?”
The smile passed from the face of the girl. She looked at the young man with fine disdain, as a great lady might reprove with a glance the man who snapped a camera at her. “Yes?” she asked. “Well, what are you going to do about it—arrest me?” Mocking him, in a burlesque of melodrama, she held out her arms. “Don’t put the handcuffs on me,” she begged.
Winthrop found her impudence amusing; and, with the charm of her novelty, he was conscious of a growing conviction that, somewhere, they had met before; that already at a crisis she had come into his life.
“I won’t arrest you,” he said with a puzzled smile, “on one condition.”
“Ah!” mocked Vera; “he is generous.”
“And the condition is,” Winthrop went on seriously, “that you tell me where we met before?”
The girl’s expression became instantly mask-like. To learn if he suspected where it was that they had met, she searched his face quickly. She was reassured that of the event he had no real recollection.
“That’s rather difficult, isn’t it,” she continued lightly, “when you consider I’ve been giving exhibitions of mind readings for the last six weeks on Broadway, and in the homes of people you probably know?”
“No,” Winthrop exclaimed eagerly, “it wasn’t in a theatre, and it wasn’t in a private house. It was—” he shook his head helplessly, and looked at her for assistance. “You don’t know, do you?”