However, she clung to it obstinately and repeated it.
'You could not know there was anything between us'; she emphasised the words deliberately.

Drake mistook the intention of the emphasis.
'But was there,' he exclaimed, 'at the time?
I didn't think of that, Miss Le Mesurier--' 'Oh no, no!' she interrupted.

'Not at the time.' The man was impracticable, and yet his very impracticability aroused in a measure her admiration.

'So you would have shot him just the same, had you known ?' 'Shot him ?' asked Drake almost absently.
'Yes.' 'Didn't I tell you?
I beg your pardon.

I didn't shoot him at all.