es
grew round with spendthrift promises of jolliness, if ever such wealth
should come within reach of her tiny, managing hands. She looked as
mischievously covetous as a magpie while she waited for him to put the
obvious question.

But Tabs wasn't interested in the obvious. He stuck to his enquiry.
"What you've told me doesn't help me to recall her," he said. "Who is
she? It's most annoying to recognize a face and not to be able to place
it against any background."

Maisie pretended to pout. "You're like all the rest of them; you come to
see me and do nothing but talk of her. I'd have hidden her in the attic
long ago, only she's by Sargent. She's too beautiful for hiding, and
then no one can afford to hide her Sargent under a bushel in these hard
times."

"And still you've not told me," Tabs reproached her.

III

"Wouldn't we be more comfortable sitting down?" Maisie slid between the
couch and the tea-table, making herself comfortable against a pile of
cushions. When Tabs looked round for a seat, he discovered the strategy
of the arrangement of the furniture. The nearest available chair to
Maisie was at least four yards away; to have selected it would have been
to have isolated himself. He would have had to have hailed her
ridiculously across the room's breadth. It was plainly intended that he
should challenge fate and share the couch, just as Pollock, Gervis,
Lockwood, Adair and so many others had done before him.

All this friendliness would make it a little difficult for him presently
when he broached the subject of Adair. He had an uneasy feeling that Sir
Tobias wouldn't approve of this way of conducting his mission. It was
one thing to fly the white flag of truce while you parleyed with the
enemy; it was quite another to share the same couch with her in a cozy
room, where there were only the two of you and the jumping flames of the
fire in the grate made the silver on the small round table glow red.
When they weren't talking there was no sound. None of the clamor of
London reached them. They might have been in a cave, far removed from
everything that disturbed. And, indeed, the little piled-up rockery
outside the windows, with the spring flowers blowing and the baby lake,
with the toy-boat drifting on its quiet surface, rather created the
illusion that this was a cave.

A restful lethargy of kindness was creeping over him. He didn't want to
be at enmity with anybody, least of all with this dainty sprite