He considered the carpet attentively. Then looking up with quick,
engaging smile:

"I want to ask you something. May I?"

She did not answer. As it had been from the first time she had
ever seen him, so it was now with her; a confused sense of the
necessity for caution in dealing with a man who had inspired in her
such an unaccountable inclination to listen to what he chose to say.

"What is it you wish to ask?" she inquired pleasantly.

"It is this: are you _really_ surprised that I came? Are you, in
your heart?"

"Did I appear to be very much agitated? Or my heart, either, Mr.
Berkley?" she asked with a careless laugh, conscious now of her
quickening pulses. Outwardly calm, inwardly Irresolute, she faced
him with a quiet smile of confidence.

"Then you were not surprised that I came?" he insisted.

"You did not wait to be asked. That surprised me a little."

"I did wait. But you didn't ask me."

"That seems to have made no difference to you," she retorted,
laughing.

"It made this difference. I seized upon the only excuse I had and