"Oh, yes!" she cried, "and you are still! You are all man—the most comprehensive type of your sex—the most logical, and the most delightfully transparent! Oh, you are funny, Don Michael. You don't know it; you don't suspect it; but you are! And that is why I read you to the depths of your nice boyish mind and heart, and felt that I need be at no pains to play my little rôle with you."
"Then," said I, "if you consider me harmless, why not trust me further?"
"I do trust you. You know I'm not born a servant. You know, also, that nevertheless I'm in service. So is my sister. So is my friend, Josephine Vannis. So is my friend, Raoul Despres. Well, then! It seems to me that I have trusted you, and that you know a great deal about us all."
"That is not very much to know," said I, so naïvely that Thusis showered the woods with her delicious laughter.
"Of course it isn't much, Don Michael. But just think how you can amuse yourself in dull moments by trying to guess the rest!"
"I can't imagine," said I, "what your object may be in taking service here in this little lonely valley in the Swiss Alps. If, as seems probable, you all are agents of some power now at war—what on earth is the use of coming here?"
Thusis smiled at me, then, resting on one arm, leaned over the cloth on the moss and made me a little signal to incline one ear toward her. When I did so she placed her lips close to my ear:
"You have promised always to treat us like your servants in the presence of others. Do you remember?"
I nodded.
"Then I ask no more of you than that, Don Michael.... Until your country enters the war."