“I’m awfully sorry,” he said.  “What a bore!  Is there anything I could do—­”

“Well, there is one thing.”

He looked up quickly.  If ever terror flashed in a man’s eyes, she saw it then in his.  Her heart sank, but her mind worked none the less well.

“It’s this,” she went on smoothly.  “There’s a lodge, a sort of tool-house, only about half a mile down the road.  Couldn’t you take a lantern, couldn’t you possibly spend the night there?”

“It isn’t by any chance,” he said, “that you’re afraid of having me here?”

“Oh, no, not you,” she answered.  “No, I should feel much safer with you here than there.” (If he went her case was ruined, and she was now actually afraid perhaps he would go.) “I should be terrified in this great place all by myself.  Still, I think you ought to go.  It’s not so very far.  You go down the road a little way and then turn to the right through the woods.  I think you’ll find it.  The roof used to leak a little, but I dare say you won’t mind that.  There isn’t any fireplace, but you could take lots of blankets—­”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said.  “No one will come to rescue us to-night.  I’ll sleep here to-night, and to-morrow as soon as it’s light, I’ll go to this cottage, and when they come, you can tell them any story you please.  Will that do?”

It did perfectly.  “Oh, thank you,” she said.  “How kind you are!  And you do forgive me, don’t you?”

“About the cereal?  Oh, yes, on one condition.”

“What is that?” She was still meltingly sweet.

“That you wash these dishes.”

She felt inclined to box his ears.  Had he seen through her all the time?

“I never washed a dish in my life,” she observed thoughtfully.

“Have you ever done anything useful?”

She reflected, and after some thought she replied, not boastfully, but as one who states an indisputable fact:  “Never.”

He folded his arms, leant against the wall and looked down upon her.  “I wish,” he said, “if it isn’t too much trouble that you would give me a detailed account of one of your average days.”

“You talk,” said she, “as if you were studying the manners and customs of savages.”

“Let us say of an unknown tribe.”

She leant back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head.  “Well, let me see,” she said.  “I wake up about nine or a little after if I haven’t been up all night, and I ring for my maid.  And about eleven—­”

“Don’t skip, please.  You ring for your maid.  What does she do for you?”