"No," she stammered. And now he looked at her more strangely. She was gathering up the price of her star and turning to leave the shop. They had made no demur; they had given her more than she dared to expect....
"Which way are you going?" said Rackham.
"Your way isn't mine," she said.
He was keeping at her side; she could not outstrip his strides with her flying little steps.
"But I want to talk to you," he said boldly. "You were a little beside yourself, weren't you, at our last meeting? I've not seen you since Barnaby's accident.... You blamed me for it, didn't you? My dear girl, if I had wanted to murder him I wouldn't have been so clumsy.—What are you doing in London all by yourself?"
That last question came suddenly, just when his bantering speech had roused her, and put her off her guard. He was watching her face; and it blanched.
"What's the trouble?" he said. "Confound—!"
He had cannoned into another man, whose approaching figure he had not marked. It was Kilgour, in London clothes, who blocked the way, with a growl for Rackham and a friendly hand-grip for Susan.
"Who's the man charging?" he grumbled. "Though you can't see daylight through me, still I'm not a bullfinch. Come along, Mrs. Barnaby; you are just the person I want. I've been praying my gods for a sympathetic eye. Come and look at my masterpiece in the window."
His large presence was a safeguard. She could have clung to him.