u see. I thought that was what your silence meant till I made
you break it. Now I want to be sure that I was right."

"What can I tell you to make you sure?"

"You can let me tell YOU everything first." She drew away, but without
taking her hands from him. "Owen saw you in Paris," she began.

She looked at him and he faced her steadily. The light was full on his
pleasantly-browned face, his grey eyes, his frank white forehead. She
noticed for the first time a seal-ring in a setting of twisted silver on
the hand he had kept on hers.

"In Paris? Oh, yes...So he did."

"He came back and told me. I think you talked to him a moment in a
theatre. I asked if you'd spoken of my having put you off--or if you'd
sent me any message. He didn't remember that you had."

"In a crush--in a Paris foyer? My dear!"

"It was absurd of me! But Owen and I have always been on odd kind of
brother-and-sister terms. I think he guessed about us when he saw you
with me in London. So he teased me a little and tried to make me curious
about you; and when he saw he'd succeeded he told me he hadn't had time
to say much to you because you were in such a hurry to get back to the
lady you were with."

He still held her hands, but she felt no tremor in his, and the blood
did not stir in his brown cheek. He seemed to be honestly turning over
his memories. "Yes: and what else did he tell you?"

"Oh, not much, except that she was awfully pretty. When I asked him
to describe her he said you had her tucked away in a baignoire and he
hadn't actually seen her; but he saw the tail of her cloak, and somehow
knew from that that she was pretty. One DOES, you know...I think he said
the cloak was pink."

Darrow broke into a laugh. "Of course it was--they always are! So that
was at the bottom of your doubts?"

"Not at first. I only laughed. But afterward, when I wrote you and you
didn't answer----Oh, you DO see?" she appealed to him.

He was looking at her gently. "Yes: I see."

"It's not as if this were a light thing between us. I want you to know
me as I am. If I thought that at that moment...when you were on your way
here, almost----"

He dropped her hand and stood up. "Yes, yes--I understand."

"But do you?" Her look followed him. "I'm not a goose of a girl. I
know...of course I KNOW...but there are things a woman feels...when
what she knows doesn't make any difference. It's not that I want you to
explain--I mean about that particular evening. It'