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 "Why not?"

In his mind a panic-stricken voice was whispering: Remember what she did to you and Sophie; don't let her do it to you and Olga!

She was still smiling, though there was evidence of wounded pride in her eyes. "Do you know how many letters I've written you in the last few months that you've rudely ignored?"

"Quite a few, I bet," Grover admitted.

"All but two," she reproached him. "And both signed hastily yours. You must be the busiest man in Paris."

She explained that they had arrived last night, and this morning Aunty Pearn had made a bee-line for the American church. "We've dragged the God of our Fathers and Philip Brooks right across the Sahara and half way up the Matterhorn. The air of this town smells too deliciously pagan for words. Won't you take me to some haunts of iniquity before we sail?"

They had sauntered out of the park, and from the boulevard one could look up to the windows of Noémi Janvier's flat. He checked an impulse to point it out; for, epoch-making as it was, it wasn't worth telling—to Rhoda. And with that admission he saw that forever there must be little reserves between himself and Rhoda Marple. It was not that she couldn't be made to understand—anything; but there were so many significant trifles in life that must be seized on the wing, that lost their point in the process of explanation.