I'm a little overwrought--the heat and--everything."

"Not another word, then, till you've finished. I'll do the talking, if
it's all the same to you. But you needn't answer--needn't listen, for
that matter. I've no pride in my conversational powers, and you
mustn't risk losing your appetite."

He seemed to find it easy enough to make talk; but Sally spared him
little attention, being at first exclusively preoccupied with the
demands of her hunger, and later--as the meal progressed, renewing her
physical strength and turning the ebbing tide of her
spirits--thoroughly engaged with the problem of how to extricate
herself from this embarrassing association or, if extrication proved
impossible, how to turn it to her own advantage. For if the affair
went on this way--his way--she were a sorry adventuress indeed.

Small cups of black coffee stood before them, steaming, when a
question roused her, and she shook herself together and faced her
burglar across the cloth, once more full mistress of her faculties.

"You're feeling better'?"

"Very much," she smiled, "and thank you!"

"Don't make me uncomfortable; remember, this is all your fault.

"That I'm here, alive and whole, able to enjoy a most unique
situation. _Who are you?_"

But she wasn't to be caught by any such simple stratagem as a question
plumped suddenly at her with all the weight of a rightful demand; she
smiled again and shook her head.

"Shan't tell."

"But if I insist?"

"Why don't you, then?"

"Meaning insistence won't get me anything?"

Sensitive to the hint of a hidden trump, she stiffened slightly.

"I haven't asked you to commit yourself. I've got a right to my own
privacy."

There fell a small pause. Lounging, an elbow on the table, a cigarette
fuming idly between his fingers, the man favoured her with a steady
look of speculation whose challenge was modified only by the
inextinguishable humour smouldering in his eyes--a look that Sally met
squarely, dissembling her excitement. For with all her fears and
perplexity she could never quite forget that, whatever its sequel,
this was verily an adventure after her own heart, that she was looking
her best in a wonderful frock and pitting her wits against those of an
engaging rogue, that she who had twelve hours ago thought herself
better dead was now living intensely an hour of vital emergency.

"But," the man said suddenly, and yet deliberately, "surely you
won't dispute my right to know wh