“I refused because of certain things I learned from Thorne about you.”

“About me? What are they?”

“That’s what I want to learn more about—and from you.”

“Ah—then you still are a detective?”

“I suppose I am,” still ignoring the irony of her tone. “But just now I primarily am a person who is interested in his own affairs as a man.”

[59]“Your affairs?” she questioned.

[59]

“Just now your affairs have become my affairs. And I’m hoping that you’ll help me by frankly answering my questions.”

“Questions about what?”

“About yourself.”

“Such as?”

“Instead of leaving it for me to discover by accident, why did you not frankly tell me of your intention to marry some one else?—when you knew what for six months I had been hoping for. How much do you care for Jack Morton?”

His determined face, and the flashing memories of what he had tried to do for her, checked the sharp replies that instinctively started for her lips. The steady gaze of his intense eyes sent a warm tremor through her, gave her a swift, tingling pleasure. But that very pleasure was a warning to her: such feeling in her was only aberration—the life signs of some of her less important elements, which she had adjudged to be a menace to her success and which she must therefore suppress. The next moment she had full control of herself—and she had decided on what should be her course with him.

“You seem to regard me as a mystery,” she remarked with tantalizing coolness.

“You are one—in a degree. And I want it solved.”

“There is nothing in the least mysterious about me,” she said in her even tone. “I’ll tell you all you[60] need to know. You may be seated if you like.” And after they were both in chairs: “First about 

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