"Now," cried Peggy, "if this were a proper adventure we have reached the place when I should be able to say, 'Why! not the Jack Barrett that Brother Billy knew at Harvard?' Then you would cry, 'And this is my old chum William's little sister Peggy that used to send him fudge!' and then everything would be all right. But I haven't any brother at all," she finished regretfully.
"And Harvard wasn't my college," said her companion. "However," he went on, "it would take more than the conventional backing of many brother Billies to put me right with you after I've told you what I have to tell you."
"Then don't do it," said Peggy softly.
"If I didn't know you'd find it out in a very few minutes I wouldn't," he confessed shamelessly. "But before I tell you I want you to know what finding you here meant to me. You've got to realize the temptation before you can understand the fall. You always got away from me, from that first time in Liverpool——"
"Oh!" said Peggy with a gasp.
"And at Paris and at Calais when you smiled adorably at me——"
"I didn't" said Peggy, blushing in the darkness.
"When you didn't smile adorably at me, then," pursued the voice relentlessly. "It was always the same. I found you and you were gone—snatched away by an unkind fate in the form of your man from Cook's. When you sailed away from me at Calais I was booked to leave that same day from Antwerp, but I came on here after you instead. London is small—the American tourist London, that is—the Abbey, the Museum, the galleries, and the Tower, but I seemed to miss you everywhere. It was fate again that sent me here to find you asleep in the corner."
"Now I know you are going to tell something very foolish," said Peggy reflectively, "when people begin to talk about fate like that you always find they are just trying to shift the responsibility."
"I want you to know it wasn't premeditated, however," pursued the voice. "It wasn't till the guard shut the door that I thought of it. You will believe that, won't you?" he pleaded.