"You are—amiable. It was very common of me."
"It might have been rather common in anybody else. You couldn't be that. Somehow," he added, smiling, "as we say in America, you seem to get away with it, Karen."
"You are very—amiable," she repeated stiffly.
And constraint fell between them once more, leaving him, however, faintly amused. She could be such a little girl at times. And she was adorable in the rôle, though she scarcely suspected it.
At the American Consulate the cab stopped and Guild turned up his coat collar and sprang out.
While he was absent the girl lay back in her corner, her eyes fixed on the rain-smeared pane. She had remained so motionless for some time when a tapping at the cabin window attracted her attention. A beggar had come to the street side of the cab and was standing there, the rain beating on his upturned face. And the girl hastily drew out her purse and let down the window.
Suddenly she became rigid; the beggar had said something to her under his breath. The English shilling fell from her fingers to the floor of the cab.
His hand still extended in supplication, the man went on in German:
"Your steamer swarmed with English spies. One of them was your stewardess."
The girl's lips parted, stiffly: "I don't understand," she said with an effort.