"You look as if it were more your custom to make captives of others. Are you in earnest?"

"Don't I sound as if I were in earnest? Of course I am in earnest!"

I tried to explain all over again. The stupidity of some people is extraordinary. Even when I had finished he did not seem to comprehend.

"Do you know that you're proposing that I should break into another man's premises?"

"Do you want me to stop locked in here till you do! Because I shall go mad and kill myself long before then."

"May I ask your name?"

"My name is Molly Boyes, and I live at The Chase, West Marden, and I ought to have met Hetty Travers at St James's Hall at half-past two, and now I don't know what time it is!"

"But I do. It's time I was off."

He spoke as if he did not care a button about me. I was seized with a perfect paroxysm of fear.

"Oh please--please--please--don't go and leave me!--please let me out!--please--please!"