“Innocent Westerner as I am,” he answered, “that idea—­”

She interrupted him.  “Yes, but don’t you see it’s entirely different now.  Now they really have a sort of hold on you.  I don’t know what Christine’s own attitude may be, but I can tell you this:  her position was so difficult that she was on the point of engaging herself to Ned.”

“Oh, come,” said Riatt politely, “your brother is not so bad as you seem to think.”

“He’s not bad at all, poor dear.  He’s very good; but women do not fall in love with him.  You, on the contrary, are rich and attractive.  You’ll just have to take my word for that,” she added without a trace of coquetry.  “And so—­and so—­and so, if I were you, my dear Cousin Max, I should give orders to have my bag packed at once, and take a very slow, tiresome train that leaves here at twelve-forty-something, and not even wait for the afternoon express.”

There was that in her tone that would have made the blood of any man run cold with terror, but he managed a smile.  “In my place you would run away?” he said.

She shook her head.  “No, I wouldn’t run away myself, but I advise you to.  I shouldn’t be in any danger.  Being a mere woman, I can be cruel, cold and selfish when the occasion demands.  But this is a situation that requires all the qualities a man doesn’t possess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Does your heart become harder when a pretty woman cries?  Is your conscience unmoved by the responsibility of some one else’s unhappiness?  Can you be made love to without a haunting suspicion that you brought it on yourself?”

“Good heavens, no!” cried Riatt from the heart.

“Then, run while there’s time.”

As the ox fears the gad-fly and the elephant the mouse, so does the bravest of men fear the emotional entanglement of any making but his own.  For an instant Riatt felt himself swept by the frankest, wildest panic.  Misadventures among the clouds he had had many times, and had looked a clean straight death in the face.  He had never felt anything like the terror that for an instant possessed him.  Then it passed and he said with conviction: 

“Well, after all, there are certain things you can’t be made to do against your will.”

“Certainly.  But you are not referring to marriage, are you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“My poor, dear man!  As if half the marriages in the world were not made against the wish of one party or the other.”

His heart sank.  “It’s perfectly true,” he said.  “And yet one does rather hate to run away.”

“Not so much as one hates afterward to think one might have.”

He laughed and she went on:  “The moment is critical.  Laura Ussher and Christine have been closeted together for the better part of two hours.  Something is going to happen immediately.  At any moment Laura may appear and say with that wonderfully casual manner of hers, ’May I have a word with you, Max?’ And then you’ll be lost.”