Page:In The Cage (London, Duckworth, 1898).djvu/158

152 and woo and supplicate success and recovery, even smiled with an effort at the agreeable that was almost ghastly and that turned the knife in her tenderness. What must be the pain of it all, of the open gulf and the throbbing fever, when this was the mere hot breath? 'We want to get what was in it—to know what it was.'

'I see—I see.' She managed just the accent they had at Paddington when they stared like dead fish. 'And you have no clue?'

'Not at all—I've the clue I've just given you.'

'Oh, the last of August?' If she kept it up long enough she would make him really angry.

'Yes, and the address, as I've said.'

'Oh, the same as last night?' He visibly quivered, as if with a gleam of hope; but it only poured oil on her quietude, and she was still deliberate. She ranged some papers. 'Won't you look?' he went on.

'I remember your coming,' she replied.

He blinked with a new uneasiness; it might have begun to come to him, through her difference, that he was somehow different himself. 'You were much quicker then, you know!'