"That you'll promise not to thank me when you've found out!" James considered this rather a masterly piece of deceptive strategy, more than making up for his indiscretion at the front door.
Beatrice dropped her eyes and drew down the corners of her mouth, with an expression half humorous, half contemptuous. "Go ahead," said she.
James went ahead and told her the whole affair at some length. His position during this narrative was a not unenviable one; it is not often that one gets a chance to recount to one's lady-love a story in which one is so obviously the hero. Nor did he lose anything by being the narrator of his own prowess; his omissions spoke louder in his favor than the most laudatory comments of a third person could have.
"So, he is free!" she said at last, when she had cross-questioned the whole thing out of him. "He is free again!..."
What was there about these words that seemed to blast James' feeling of triumph, to chill the very marrow in his bones? Was it only the words; was it not rather the extraordinary intensity of the pleasure on her face; a pleasure which did not fade with her smile, but lived on in the dreamy expression of the eyes, gazing sightlessly out of the window?... She spoke again in a moment or two, asking a question about some detail in the case, and the feeling left him again. He answered her question with perfect composure. Such hysterical vapors must be incidental to love, he supposed. He was not troubled about it at all, unless, very vaguely, by the fleeting memory of a similar experience, occurring—oh, a long time ago. Nothing to worry about.
He did not say much after he had completed his narrative. He was content simply to sit and look at her, drinking in her smiles, her comments, her little ejaculations of pleasure and answering her stray questions about the great affair. The joy of discovery was not yet even tinged with the thirst for possession. It was enough to watch her as she talked and laughed and moved about; to watch her, the living original, and think how much more glorious she was than the most vivid of his recollections of her. Oh, how wonderful she was!
Presently he was aware of her making remarks laudatory of himself, and primed his ears to listen.
"But how clever it was of you, James," she was saying, "to work out the whole thing, just from that one little glimpse—and so quickly, too! Of course it was just a Heaven-sent chance, your seeing her at that moment, but I can see how much more there was to it than that. What a frightfully clever person you are, James—a regular detective! You really must give up making motor cars and be another Sherlock Holmes!"
All this fell very pleasantly on his ears, though he could have wished, if he had taken the time to, that she could have employed some other adjective than "clever." But there was no time for such minor considerations. Just at that moment they heard the rattle of the front door latch, and Beatrice, knowing that none but Harry ever entered the house without first ringing, jumped from her chair and started towards the hall, the words "There he is now!" glowing on her lips....
And then the universe crumbled about James' ears. Had his father's early readings extended into the minor Elizabethan Drama, he might have remembered the words of Beaumont—