Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/77

Rh But he crossed the room after her and stood close beside her at the window. He towered above her in his bigness like something taurine, alert and yet ponderously calm.

"Why are you afraid of me?" he asked, with his eyes on the gardenia-white oval of her cheek.

"I'm not," she replied with a crisp small laugh like the stirring of chopped ice in a wine-cooler. "I'm not in the least afraid of you."

A less obtuse man would have been chilled by the scorn in her voice. But Uhlan was too sure of his ground, his all too familiar ground, to heed side-issues.

"It's you who makes me afraid of myself," he murmured, stooping closer to her. He spoke quite collectedly, though his face was a shade paler than before.

"You said to-morrow at three, I believe," she observed in an icily abstracted voice. That tone, she remembered, had always served its purpose. It was conclusive, coolly dismissive. For she still