Page:Vance--The Lone Wolf.djvu/147

Rh  him steadily beneath level brows. Then she said with an odd laugh: "You have your own way of putting one on honour!"

"I don't need to—with you."

She analyzed this with gathering perplexity. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, I don't need to put you on your honour—because I'm sure of you. Even were I not, still I'd refrain from exacting any pledge, or attempting to." He paused and shrugged before continuing: "If I thought you were still to be distrusted, Miss Bannon, I'd say: 'There's a free door; go when you like, back to the Pack, turn in your report, and let them act as they see fit.'… Do you think I care for them? Do you imagine for one instant that I fear any one—or all—of that gang?"

"That rings suspiciously of egoism!"

"Let it," he retorted. "It's pride of caste, if you must know. I hold myself a grade better than such cattle; I've intelligence, at least. … I can take care of myself!"

If he might read her countenance, it expressed more than anything else distress and disappointment.

"Why do you boast like this—to me?"

"Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels—impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De Morbihan and—all their crew."

"And Bannon," she corrected calmly—"you meant to say!"

"Wel-l—" he stammered, discountenanced.

"It doesn't matter," she assured him. "I quite under-