she repeated wonderingly. “Just what do you mean? So far from locking you out, I was wondering whether I dared come and disturb you.”
He moved across towards the double doors and opened them without difficulty.
“H’m, that’s odd,” he observed, looking around at her quickly. “I tried this inner door just now. It seemed to me to be locked.”
“I, too, I found it stiff,” she said. “I first thought that you had locked yourself in, then I found that it gave quite easily if one turned the key the right way.”
“You have been into my bedroom?”
She smiled up into his face.
“Do you mind? My uncle has gone away—no one knows where. Nina has gone motoring with a friend to Nice. I am left alone. I do not like being by myself. I come along here, I knock softly at the door of your sitting room. No reply. I enter. Emptiness. I think I will see if you are sleeping. I open both those doors without any particular difficulty. I see you lying on the bed. I go softly over. You sleep—oh, how you were sleeping!”
Her eyes met Fawley’s without flinching. There stole into his brain a faint recollection that some time during that deep slumber of his there had come to him a dreamlike suggestion of a perfume which had reminded him of the girl, a faint consciousness, not strong enough to wake him, of the presence of something agreeable. She was probably telling him the truth.
“I had not the heart to wake you,” she went on. “I stole out again. I sat in your easy-chair and I waited.”
“I perceive,” he pointed out, “that a drawer of my writing table is open and that my despatch box has changed its position.”
Her eyes opened a little wider.
“You do not think that I am a thief?”
“How can I tell? Why did you open that drawer?”
“To find some note paper. I thought that I would write some letters.”
“Why did you move my despatch box?”
“For the same purpose,” she assured him. “I found it locked, so I left it alone. Do you think that I came to steal something? Can you not believe that I came because I was lonely—to see you?”
He smiled.
“To tell you the truth,” he admitted, “I cannot see what else you could have come for. I have no secrets from Mr. Krust.”
“But you have,” she exclaimed impetuously. “You will not tell him what he so much wants to know.”
“So that is why you are here,” Fawley remarked, with a faint smile. “You want to see if you can find out for your uncle Berati’s disposition towards him, and you think that I may have papers. My little butterfly lady, you are very much an amateur at this sort of thing, aren’t you? Men do not carry papers nowadays. It is too dangerous. Besides, who am I to see what lies behind Berati’s mind?”
“I tell you that I care nothing about Berati,” she cried suddenly. “I was weary of being alone and I came to see you.”
She moved across and stood beside him. She was wearing some sort of negligée between golf and dinner costume, something in one piece with vivid flashes of scarlet and wide sleeves, and her arm rested affectionately upon his shoulders.
“Please do not be horrid to me,” she begged. “Mr. Krust has been very kind to me. If we could help him—either Nina or I—we should do so, but not at your expense.”
“You would have no chance, little Greta,” he told her, with a very gentle caress. “Since we seem to be arriving at an understanding, tell me what I can do for you.”
“First of all,” she said, drawing her arm tighter around him, “try to believe that I am not the frivolous little idiot I sometimes try to appear. Secondly, believe also that when I came here this afternoon, the great thing in my mind was to see you, not to be like one of the adventuresses of fiction and pry about for papers; and thirdly, as I am left all alone, I thought perhaps you might take pity on me and ask me to dine—just you and I alone—only much later.”
He looked out of the window, over which the curtains had not yet been drawn, at the flashing lamps of the square, and further away at the lights stealing out from the black curtain of the shrouded hillside.
“My dear,” he protested, “you are inviting me to flirt with you.”
“Is it so difficult?” she whispered. “I am much nicer than you think I am. I am much fonder of you than you could believe.”
“It would not be difficult at all,” he assured her. “But alas, how would you feel when I told you, as I would have to very soon, that most of the time when I am not thinking of more serious things I spend thinking of another woman?”
She stood quite still and he had a queer fancy that the soft palm which she had stretched out upon his cheek grew colder. It was several moments before she spoke.
“I would be sorry,” she confessed. “But, after all, the days are past when a man thinks only of one woman. It was beautiful to read of and think of, but one scarcely hopes for it now. Who is she, please?”
“What does it matter?” he answered. “I am not sure that I trust her any more than I trust you. The truth of it is I am a clumsy fellow with women. I have lived so long with the necessity of trusting no one that I cannot get out of the habit of it.”
She hesitated for a moment.
“I can be truthful,” she said earnestly. “With you I would like to be. It was not writing paper I searched for in your drawer and if I could have opened your box, I should have done so. I have a bunch of keys in my pocket.”
“But what is it you are hoping to find?” he asked.
“Mr. Krust,” she said, “thinks that you must know towards which party in Germany Berati is leaning. He thinks that you must know the reason why he is not allowed to go to Rome.”
“Supposing I assured you,” he told her, “that I have not the faintest idea what lies behind Berati’s mind. He has not asked my advice or given me his opinion. I have learnt more from Mr. Krust than from him. I have not a single paper in my possession which would interest you in any way. If I might make a wild guess, it would be that Berati is afraid that Krust might gain access to and influence the greater man who stands behind him.”
“Is that the truth?” she asked fervently.
“It is the honest truth,” he assured her. “You see, therefore, that I am useless, so far as regards your schemes. Realising that, if you would like to dine with me, I should be delighted.”
“If you want me to,” she consented eagerly. “I believe you think that I am very terrible. Perhaps I am, but not in the way you imagine. Do you want me to dine with you, Major Fawley? Would it give you pleasure?”
“Of course it would,” he answered. “I warn you that I am a very wooden sort of person but I am all alone for to-night, at any rate, and you are not an unattractive young woman, are you?”
She
