Not until the very close of the evening, and when he had resigned himself to hopelessness, did the opportunity come for him to speak with her alone. She caught his eye, and, to his amazement, made a slight movement of her head, unobserved by the others but curiously imperative to him. There was no mistaking the meaning of the direct, intense look that she gave him.
She was appealing to him as a friend,--as one on whom she could depend!
The spirit of chivalry took possession of him. His blood leaped to the call. She needed him and he would not fail her. And it was with difficulty that he contrived to hide the exaltation that might have ruined everything!
Loeb had returned to his labours in Mr. Curtis's study, after bidding Barnes a courteous good-night. It seemed to the latter that with the secretary's departure an indefinable restraint fell away from the small company.
While he was trying to invent a pretext for drawing her apart from the others, she calmly ordered Van Dyke to relinquish his place on the couch beside her to Barnes.
"Come and sit beside me, Mr. Barnes," she called out, gaily. "I will not bite you, or scratch you, or harm you in any way. Ask Mr. O'Dowd and he will tell you that I am quite docile. What is there about me, sir, that causes you to think that I am dangerous? You have barely spoken a word to me, and you've been disagreeably nice to Mrs. Collier and Mrs. Van Dyke. I don't bite, do I, Mr. O'Dowd?"
"You do," said O'Dowd promptly. "You do more than that. You devour. Bedad, I have to look in a mirror to convince meself that you haven't swallowed me whole. That's another way of telling you, Barnes, that she'll absorb you entirely."
It was a long, deep and comfortable couch of the davenport class, and she sat in the middle of it instead of at the end, a circumstance that he was soon to regard as premeditated. She had planned to bring him to this place beside her and had cunningly prepared against the possibility that he might put the full length of the couch between them if she settled herself in a corner. As it was, their elbows almost touched as he sat down beside her.
For a few minutes she chided him for his unseemly aversion. He was beginning to think that he had been mistaken in her motive, and that after all she was merely satisfying her vanity. Suddenly, and as she smiled into his eyes, she said, lowering her voice slightly: "Do not appear surprised at anything I may say to you. Smile as if we were uttering the silliest nonsense. So much depends upon it, Mr. Barnes."