I wonder if anything has really happened to make you talk like this ?" He flashed a quick glance at her underneath his heavy brows.

Nothing in her face betrayed any more than the most ordinary interest in what he was saying.

Yet somehow, from that moment, he had uneasy doubts concerning her, whether there might be by any chance some reason for the tolerance and the interest with which she had regarded him from the first.

The mere suspicion of it was a shock to him.

He relapsed once more into a state of nervous silence.