"Yes?"
"Rather."
"In what humorous particular do you hand it so generously to Thusis?" I inquired.
"Oh, you know well enough she's odd. You can't explain her. She's no peasant, and you know it. She's not Swiss, either. I don't know what she is. I don't know quite what she's doing here. Sometimes she reminds me of a runaway school girl: sometimes of the humorless, pep-less prude who usually figures as heroine in a best seller. And sometimes she acts like a vixen! ... I didn't tell you," he added, "but I was amiable enough to try to kiss her that first evening. I don't know where you were—but you can take it from me, O'Ryan, I thought I'd caught hold of the original vestal virgin and that my hour had come for the lions!"
"You beast," said I, not recollecting my own behavior in the cellar. "What did she say?"
"She didn't say anything. She merely looked it. I've been horribly afraid she'd tell her sister," he added naïvely.
"Smith," I said, laying an earnest hand on his arm, "you mustn't frivol with my household. I won't stand for it. I admit that my household is an unusual one. Frankly, I have no more idea than you have that Thusis and Clelia are real servants, or why they choose to take service here with me. Probably they're political agents. I don't care. But you and I mustn't interfere with them, first, because it disorganizes my ménage; second, because I believe they're really nice girls."
"I think so, too," he said.
"Well, then, if they are, we don't want to forget it. And also we must remember that probably they are political agents of some country now engaged in this war, and it won't do for us to become involved."
"How involved?"