She turned pale: her head drooped. "Let us talk of something else," she said in an altered voice. "Myself is displeasing to me."
"But if it pleases me?"
"That is impossible," said Leam. "How can it please you?"
Was it craft? was it indifference? or was it honest ignorance of the true motive of a man's words and looks? Edgar pondered for a moment, but could come to no definite conclusion save rejection of that one hypothesis of craft. Leam was too savagely direct, too uncompromising, to be artful. No man who understood women only half so well as Edgar Harrowby understood them could have credited such a character as hers with deception.
He wavered, then, between the alternative of indifference or ignorance. If the one, he felt bound by self-respect to overcome it—that self-respect which a man of his temperament puts into his successes with women; if the other, he must enlighten it. "Does it not please you to talk of those you like?" he asked after a short pause.
"Yes," said Leam, her face suddenly softening into tenderness as she thought of her mother; of whom Edgar did not think. "Talk to me of Spain and all that you did there."
"And that would be of what you like?" he asked.
"Of what I love," returned Leam in a low voice, her eyes lifted to his, soft and humid.
"How can I read you? What can I think? What do you want me to believe?" cried Edgar in strange trouble.
"What have I said?" she asked with grave surprise. "Why do you speak like this?"