“Suppose I can’t fight fair any longer. Suppose I’ve let myself get trapped and it isn’t up to me but to somebody else.”
“How do you mean?”
“Up to your father, say.”
“My father?”
“Yes. How could I turn him loose when the first thing he did would be to swear out a warrant for my arrest?”
“But he wouldn’t—not if you freed him.”
He laughed harshly. “I thought you knew him. He’s hard as nails.”
She recognized the justice of this appraisal. “But he is generous too. He stands by his friends.”
“I’m not his friend, not so you could notice it.” He laughed again, bitterly. “Not that it matters. Of course I was just putting a case. Nothing to it really.”
He was hedging because he thought he had gone too far, but she appeared not to notice it. Her eyes had the faraway look of one who communes with herself.