“You needn’t.”

“I know I needn’t.”  Arlee’s tone was suddenly proud.  Then she melted again.  “But I want you to know.  He was—­he was trying to make me care for him....  He wasn’t really as dreadful as you might think him, only just insane—­about me—­and utterly unscrupulous.  But he did want me to like him and so, when I found out, when Fritzi told me I was in a trap, I tried to play his game.  I flirted one day in the garden, at lunch, and made him think——­ You see, I had to gain time and try to get word to people.  But I hated him so I——­” She broke off, the pupils of her fixed eyes big and black with the memory.

“You know I can’t—­I can’t think of you—­alone there,” came huskily from the young man.

“He never dared to touch me—­really—­till last night,” she said fiercely.  “He tried, but I—­I held him off.  Only he talked to me—­Oh, how he talked.  Like a river of words....  I hate all those words....  If ever again a man asks me to marry him I don’t ever want him to talk about it.  I want him just to say two words, Will you?” Her laugh caught quiveringly in her throat.

It taxed all the young man’s control to keep his tongue off the echo.

“He just raved,” she went on after a pause, “and I had to listen—­but last night he was horrible.  I could never have got to the candles if his hand hadn’t been hurt.”

“I wish I’d shot his hand off,” said Billy bitterly.

“Oh!  Was it you who——?”

“When we were in the palace.”  He told her again about the raid and she nodded delightedly over it.

“It’s so wonderful for you to have done all this,” she said with sudden shyness.  “You had just met me——­”

The things on Billy’s tongue wouldn’t do at all.  None of them.  What he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained.  “You were my countrywoman—­and alone.”

“So are the Evershams,” said Arlee, with sudden bubbling laughter, and then as suddenly checked herself.  Her fleet glance at him was half-scared.  “You—­you are very good to your countrywomen in distress,” she got out stammeringly.

Billy contemplated his cigar.  It was safer.

Presently she reverted to the topic of discovery.  “But about Mr. Falconer?  Are you sure his suspicions are over now?”

“Perfectly sure.  Or they will be the moment he sees you.  You’ll have to laugh at him if he mentions them, of course;” Billy spoke with heartiness.

“He’d hate it,” the girl said musingly.  “The talk and all—­about me—­Oh, after being such a fool I’d never be the same to them!” she broke out passionately.

The furtive pain was bolder now; Billy felt it worming deeper and deeper into his sorry consciousness.  It mattered so much to her what Falconer thought—­so much....

“But I’ll do anything you say,” she said meekly, looking up at her rescuer with those big eyes whose blueness always startled him like unsuspected lakes.  He saw then that she meant to be very grateful to him.  Somehow that deepened the pang.  He didn’t want that kind of bond....