"But now"-- striking a match and holding it for her to light her cigarette--"you will smoke because you really like it, and because it would be a friendly action and condone the fact that you are being held a prisoner against your will." Sara smiled.
"It is a very charming prison," she said, contemplating the harmony of the room with satisfied eyes.
"You like it ?" he asked eagerly.
She looked at him in surprise.

What could it matter to him whether she liked it or not?
"Why, of course, I like it," she replied.

"Who wouldn't?
You see," she added a little wistfully, "I have no home of my own now, so I have to enjoy other people's." "I have no home, either," he said shortly.
"But--but this----" "Is the house in which I live.

One wants more than a few sticks of furniture to make a home." Sara was struck by the intense bitterness in his tone.

Truly this man, with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate outspokenness, was as incomprehensible as any sphinx.
She hastily steered the conversation towards a less dangerous channel, and gradually they drifted into the discussion of art and music; and Sara, not without some inward trepidation--remembering Molly's experience--touched on his own musicianship.
"It was surely you I herd ?" she queried a trifle hesitatingly.