Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/203

Rh "And has anything of importance happened to her?" the man across the table was quietly inquiring.

"Something very important," I just as quietly responded.

Then something in his manner, something which I couldn't define, something which I could never have explained, made me pull up short. I felt like Eliza crossing the ice, only the bloodhounds were in my own heart, instead of on the other side of the Ohio. And you can't run away from what you carry in your own heart.

"You don't know much about me, do you?" I finally said to that strange friend of mine, who, at one turn of a card, might in some way prove himself an enemy.

"Far more than you imagine," he said, though I knew he wasn't altogether sincere in saying it. "But you, on the other hand, know very little about me!"

"Would you prefer that I didn't know more?" I asked him. And I tried to ask it honestly.

He seemed to realize that. For the first time that night a look of embarrassment crept into his face.

"I'm afraid you'd be ashamed of me, if you did," he finally acknowledged.

"Then how about me?" I asked.