She sprang to her feet.

“Oh! you are intolerable!” she exclaimed hotly.  “You know I didn’t mean that!”

He regarded her quite placidly.

“You did.  That is precisely what you were thinking.  Only you funked putting it into plain words.”

He got up and came to her side and stood looking down at her.

“Isn’t it a fact?” he insisted.  “Isn’t it?”

Magda looked up, tried to answer in the negative and failed.  He had spoken the simple truth and she knew it.  But none the less she hated him for it—­hated him for driving her up into a corner and trying to force an acknowledgment from her.  She remained obstinately silent.

He turned away with a short, amused laugh.

“So you haven’t even the courage of your convictions,” he commented.

Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms of them.  He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue in the fog!  He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative positions to speak to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her before.  Or woman either!  Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have thrust the naked truth so savagely under her eyes.

And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward!  Well, at least he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in that respect.  She walked straight up to him, her small head held high, in her dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.

“So that is what you think, is it?” she said in a low voice of bitter anger.  “Well, I have the courage of my convictions.”  She paused.  Then, with an effort:  “Yes, I did think you weren’t ‘suitably impressed,’ as you put it.  You are perfectly right.”

He threw her a swift glance of surprise.  Presumably he hadn’t anticipated such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no disposition to lay down the probe.

“You didn’t think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and being appropriately overjoyed, did you?” he pursued relentlessly.

Magda pressed her lips together.  Then, with an effort: 

“No,” she admitted.

“And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and made no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you supposed I must be ignorant of your identity?  Was that it?”

Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its undercurrent of keen contempt.  Each word stung like the flick of a lash on bare flesh.  But she forced herself to answer—­and to answer honestly.

“Yes,” she said very low.  “That was it.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“Comment is superfluous, I think.”

She made an impulsive step towards him.

For some unfathomable reason she minded—­minded intensely—­that this man should hold her in such poor esteem.  She wanted to put herself right with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.