"Or to reprove me if I do so with my eyes open?" she suggested.
"To ask for an explanation, at all events, if I do not understand what your motive could be."
"You are very kind," she said. "You want me to excuse myself if I can, otherwise you will be forced to suspect something unjustifiable."
"That is the literal truth," I answered.
She laughed. "But you have not answered my question," she said.
"What were you doing there yourself?"
"I had been dining at the Charing Cross Hotel with a friend who had just returned from India," I told her, "and I was walking back to the house of the friend with whom I am staying. He lives in a street off Piccadilly."
"But what were you doing in Regent Street?"
"Following you."
She laughed again. "Did you see that old man speak to me?" she asked.
"Yes."