Page:The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1916).djvu/272

think I'm being silly—you do think I'm being silly, don't you?"

"I have never harboured such an unworthy thought," he said virtuously.

"Yes, you have," she persisted, "but really I can't tell you where I am living. I have a very special reason for not doing so. It's not myself that I'm thinking about, but there's a life involved."

This was a somewhat dramatic statement to make and she felt she had gone too far.

"Perhaps I don't mean that," she said, "but there is some one I care for—" she dropped her voice.

"Oh," said T. X. blankly.

He came down from his rosy heights into the shadow and darkness of a sunless valley.

"Some one you care for," he repeated after a while.

"Yes."

There was another long silence, then,

"Oh, indeed," said T. X.

Again the unbroken interval of quiet and after