"What!!!"
The girl smiled wearily: "Really," she said, "you are such a boy to be mixed in with matters of
this colour. I think that's the reason you have defeated us--the
trained fencer dreads a left-handed novice more than any classic
master of the foils.
"And that is what you have done to us--blundered--if you'll forgive
me--into momentary victory.
"But such victories are only momentary, Mr. Neeland. Please believe
it. Please try to understand, too, that this is no battle with masks
and plastrons and nicely padded buttons. No; it is no comedy, but a
grave and serious affair that must inevitably end in tragedy--for
somebody."
"For me?" he asked without smiling.
She turned on him abruptly and laid one hand lightly on his arm with a
pretty gesture, at once warning, appealing, and protective.
"I asked you to come here," she said, "because--because I want you to
escape the tragedy."
"You want me to escape?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I--am sorry for you."
He said nothing.
"And--I like you, Mr. Neeland."
The avowal in the soft, prettily modulated voice, lost none of its
charm and surprise because the voice was a trifle tremulous, and the
girl's face was tinted with a delicate colour.
"I like to believe what you say, Scheherazade," he said pleasantly.
"Somehow or other I never did think you hated me personally--except
once----"
She flushed, and he was silent, remembering her humiliation in the
Brookhollow house.
"I don't know," she said in a colder tone, "why I should feel at all
friendly toward you, Mr. Neeland, except that you are personally
courageous, and you have shown yourself generous under a severe
temptation to be otherwise.
"As for--any personal humiliation--inflicted upon me----" She looked
down thoughtfully and pretended to sort out a bonbon to her taste,
while the hot colour cooled in her cheeks.
"I know," he said, "I've also jeered at you, jested, nagged you,
taunted you, kiss----" He checked himself and he smiled and
ostentatiously lighted a cigarette.
"Well," he said, blowing a cloud of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling,
"I believe that this is as strange a week as any man ever lived. It's
like a story book--like one of your wonderful stories, Scheherazade.
It doesn't seem real, now that it is ended----"
"It is not ended," she interrupted in a low voice.
He smiled.
"You know," he said, "there's no use trying to frighten such an idiot
as I am."