Annesley shook her head. "If you knew Mr. Ruthven Smith, you'd know that
would be impossible. Why, I don't believe he remembers when I'm out of
sight that I exist."

"Still more peculiar! Miss Grayle, I haven't any right to ask you
questions. But I shouldn't be a man if I weren't forgetting my own
affairs--in--in curiosity, if you want to call it that (I don't!), about
yours. No! I won't let it pass for ordinary curiosity. Can't you
understand you're doing for me more than any woman ever has done, or any
man would do? That does make a bond between us. You can't deny it. Tell
me about this Mr. Smith whom you don't know and never saw, yet came to
the Savoy Hotel to meet."




CHAPTER III

WHY SHE CAME


Surprised by the abruptness of his question, Annesley's eyes dropped
from the eyes of her host, which tried to hold them. She felt that she
ought to be angry with him for taking advantage of her generosity--for
it amounted to that! Yet anger would not come, only shame and the desire
to hide a thing which would change his gratitude to contempt.

"Don't let's waste time talking about me," she said. "We haven't
arranged----"