Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/295

Rh "For instance?" I said, very much on my guard.

He sat staring at me across the table for a full minute before he spoke.

"Why don't you like me?" he asked, as offhandedly as though he were inquiring the time of day.

"Who said I didn't?"

"Your face says so, five or six times every minute!"

It was my turn to sit and look at him. For it suddenly came home to me that I was enjoying this novel tête-à-tête much more than I had imagined. He was a man easy to talk to, was Wendy Washburn. He was natural and unaffected, and there were times when you seemed to fit into his humor as easily as you fit into an armchair. There was a quiet impersonality about him that put you at your ease. He never reminded you of your sex. There was no smirking gallantry about him. Even in spite of the fact that there were a good many corners in his life that he'd kept covered up, he suggested, in his apparent openness, a young and healthy boy. He always seemed to be doing the right sort of thing. It may not have been the right sort of thing, of course, but he had a way of doing it which made it seem right. And he would always be easy to get on with.