She laughed. "I like you, you're so unexpected. A little while ago you piqued my curiosity so, I couldn't rest without seeing you again." This was said with the wide-eyed seeming simplicity that was her trump suit. "You so plainly did not like me! And most people do!" This with an adorable, deprecating shrug.
"I did like you!" Jack protested with an inscrutable face. "I liked you so much, I felt I had to be very, very careful!"
"Don't be careful!" she murmured, turning on the full fire of those terrible eyes. "I despise careful men!"
Jack kept a prudent hold on himself. "I have no choice," he said calmly. "How long would I hold my job if I was not--well, careful?"
"You're afraid!" she said with provoking scorn.
"Is it true he has a hundred million?" she asked idly.
"You can't prove it by me. I'm only his secretary."
"But you do everything for him. He depends on you absolutely. Anybody can see that."
Jack declined to be drawn into a discussion of Bobo.
"How long have you known him?" she asked.
"Oh, quite a while," he said vaguely. He could not tell what mythical details of their past Bobo might have given her.
"What a responsibility it will be on you! Looking after all that money and everything."
"Oh, the executor and the lawyer will take care of all that."
"_What does she want to know that for?_" thought Jack. She had overdone the carelessness with which she asked it. He gave her a fictitious name, and looked at her with a new interest. At the moment her profile was turned towards him, and the way the light fell on it certain lines of weariness were shown up. She looked older than she had seemed at first.
Jack thought: "Mr. Gyde said that, too, of the stenographer who worked for him. This is more than a coincidence. Wouldn't it be amazing if----!"
"What do you think of me?" she asked with a direct challenge. "I can see that you're revolving me in your head all the time."
"Well, you do make a man dizzy," he parried.
"No, I'm serious. How would you describe me if you had to?"
"Come now, you're a great reader of character. You're always studying people, and trying to figure them out to yourself."
"Am I?" said Jack. He had a sudden idea. "They say there's more character in people's hands than in anything else," he said carelessly.