I would not
distress you for the world, Miss Gates. Don't you think that this has
been the most extraordinary interview?"
The tears trembled like diamonds on the girl's long lashes and a smile
flashed over her face. The sudden transformation was wonderfully
fascinating.
"What you might call an impossible interview," she laughed. "And all the
more impossible because it was quite impossible that you could ever have
been here before."
"When I was in this room two nights ago," David protested, "I saw---"
"Did you see me, for instance? If not, you couldn't have been here."
A small, misshapen figure, with the face of a Byron--Apollo on the bust
of a Satyr--came in from behind the folding doors at the back of the
dining-room carrying some letters in his hand. The stranger's dark,
piercing eyes were fixed inquiringly upon Steel.
"Bell," the latter cried; "Hatherly Bell! you have been listening!"
The little man with the godlike head admitted the fact, coolly. He
had been writing letters in the back room and escape had been
impossible for him.
"Funny enough, I was going to look you up to-day," he said.
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