I've put my head in the lion's
mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped once," she
rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green leather-chair.
"Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world couldn't think
that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or that I would
pay for the candle without burning it."

"On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them."

She laughed happily. "Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as
ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after
Gleg's icy welcome."

He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines of
Swinburne, alive with cynicism:

"And the worst and the best of this is,
That neither is most to blame
If she has forgotten my kisses,
And I have forgotten her name."

Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. "I should probably be able to
endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny
past," she rejoined, with mock pathos. "That's the worst of our
friendship, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent
flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a
needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian
Stafford--not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle."

"'On the point of a needle,'" Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went
over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it
meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor
impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a
little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth.

"The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good deal,"
he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: "Do you remember Mr.
Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?"

"Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng
won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs
and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was
awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly by--guess
whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to
find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as
he called it."

"Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to
make a needle-point dipped in it deadly."

"I don't believe it a bit, but--"

Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress--sh