"Not a bit of it." Her voice sharpened just a trifle. "That would spoil the whole lesson. They needn't worry unless they choose. Then when I come home, if they make a fuss over me I shall say: 'Now see how silly you've been. I've been having luncheon with Mr. Crosby,' You wouldn't take the edge off of that disclosure?" She tilted her head on one side.
"But they ought to know merely that you're safe," I ventured.
"Safe? What should I be but safe? No—" She put out an emphatic little hand. "I'm free from the convent, and I'm not going to be taken to task by so young and good-looking a confessor. Besides, I'm ashamed of you. Where's your gallantry? You don't seem to appreciate the honor of our secret at all."
"Perhaps the trouble is," I said cautiously, "that I don't understand the secret myself. What did you mean when you said—"
"Oh, that!" she laughed. "Why, I meant the hardest thing in the world for a man to understand, and that is—just nothing at all. You had all of you been so stupid and serious and uncomfortable that night that I felt it would serve you right to make you jump. So I made a little mystery of my own, and it worked beautifully. It sounded every bit as sensible as yours, too."
And there he stood on the sidewalk
She was beyond me. Two or three times after that I worked around to the same subject, but she evaded me so deftly that I could not for the life of me be sure whether it was evasion or unconsciousness; and my attempts to communicate with the family met with no better fortune. At last I tried to leave her for a moment on the plea of calling a taxicab.
"You live on Table Mountain, and your name is Truthful James," was her comment. "Taxicabs are scarce in Stamford, Mr. Crosby, and it would take too long to get one here. Let the waiter call one of those outside."
At that, I gave up with a good grace. I should be free to report as soon as I had left her with her friends, and a few minutes more or less could not matter much by now. She gave the chauffeur an address in the sixties and we were presently there: one of these new American basement houses sandwiched in among the older brownstone fronts of the more conservative blocks. During the short drive, she had been silent and I thought a little disturbed; but her farewell was bright with reawakened gaiety.