her question dissipated any doubt that remained.

"No. I haven't been that kind of a man," simply. "I could look into
my mother's eyes without any sense of shame, if that is what you mean."

"That is all I care to know. Your mother is living?"

"Yes. But I haven't seen her in ten years." His mother! His brows
met in a frown. His proud beautiful mother!

Elsa saw the frown, and realized that she had approached delicate
ground. She stirred her tea and sipped it slowly.

"There has been a deal of chatter about shifty untrustworthy eyes," he
said. "The greatest liars I have ever known could look St. Peter
straight and serenely in the eye. It's a matter of steady nerves,
nothing more. Somebody says that so and so is a fact, and we go on
believing it for years, until some one who is not a person but an
individual explodes it."

"I agree with you. But there is something we rely upon far more than
either eyes or ears, instinct. It is that attribute of the animal
which civilization has not yet successfully dulled. Women rely upon
that more readily than men."

"And make more mistakes," with a cynicism he could not conceal.

She had no ready counter for this. "Do you go home from Rangoon, now
that you have made your fortune?"