“Do you think that I am a fool?” he cried.  “Do you think I do not know that if there were not something moving in your brain you would think no more of that clerk, that bourgeois estate agent, than of the door-mat beneath your feet?  It is what I always complain about.  You make use of me as a tool.  There are always things which I do not understand.  He comes here, this young man, under a pretext, whether he knows it or not.  You talk to him for an hour at a time.  There should be nothing in your life which I do not know of, Elizabeth,” he continued, his voice suddenly hoarse as he leaned towards her.  “Can’t you see that there is danger in friendships for you and for me, there is danger in intimacies of any sort?  I share the danger; I have a right to share the knowledge.  This young man has no money of his own, I take it.  Of what use is he to us?”

“You are too hasty, my dear father,” she replied.  “Let me assure you that there is nothing at all mysterious about Mr. Tavernake.  The simple truth is that the young man rather attracts me.”

The professor gazed at her incredulously.

“Attracts you!  He!”

“You have never perfectly understood me, my dear parent,” she murmured.  “You have never appreciated that trait in my character, that strange preference, if you like, for the absolutely original.  Now in all my life I never met such a young man as this.  He wears the clothes and he has the features and speech of just such a person as you have described, but there is a difference.”

“A difference, indeed!” the professor interrupted roughly.  “What difference, I should like to know?”

She shrugged her shoulders lightly.

“He is stolid without being stupid,” she explained.  “He is entirely self-centered.  I smile at him, and he waits patiently until I have finished to get on with our business.  I have said quite nice things to him and he has stared at me without change of expression, absolutely without pleasure or emotion of any sort.”

“You are too vain, Elizabeth,” her father declared.  “You have been spoilt.  There are a few people in the world whom even you might fail to charm.  No doubt this young man is one of them.”

She sighed gently.

“It really does seem,” she admitted, “as though you were right, but we shall see.  By-the-bye, hadn’t you better go?  The five minutes are nearly up.”

He came over to her side, his hat and gloves in his hand, prepared for departure.

“Will you tell me, upon your honor, Elizabeth,” he begged, “that there is no other reason for your interest?  That you are not engaged in any fresh schemes of which I know nothing?  Things are bad enough as they are.  I cannot sleep, I cannot rest, for thinking of our position.  If I thought that you had any fresh plans on hand—­”

She flicked the ash from her cigarette and checked him with a little gesture.