Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/79

 of her, with an effort toward coolness, as he seated himself in the arm-chair.

"Only in so far as all duties accomplished can be called a pleasure," was her acidulated response.

"Then you have done what was expected of you?" demanded the Secret Agent, parrying for his opening.

"Only partly, Mr. Kestner," was her reply, "for the most painful part of it has yet to come."

He was perversely conscious of the fact that he wished to talk to her, to hear her voice, to await some accidental sounding of a note that would not be impersonal, to break through the mists which were making her personality such an elusive one.

"And that part is?" he prompted.

"That I cannot tell you." She was silent for a moment or two, staring down at the table in front of her. "I helped you once, and gained nothing by it. This time I must think of myself."

An inapposite impression of her bodily fineness, of a wayward delicacy of line and colouring, crept over him, even in that moment of tension.

"But are you thinking of yourself?" he demanded.

Only once before, he remembered, had this personal note been struck between them and that for not more than a breath or two. Once only had there been anything more than a hand-grope through the vague draperies of reserve shutting her off from his world. And it astonished Kestner to find himself confronting her with emotions which, however mixed, were still actual and disturbing.

"What do you mean by that?" she countered.

He knew she was a woman of spirit. He could see