"When I tell you a thing--_that_ is what you are to think," she said crisply.
"Yes.... I realize that now. I am sorry. May I ask your forgiveness?"
"May I ask you to tell me what you did with those papers after the deck steward gave them to you?"
"Then I am afraid that I shall have to tell you how you disposed of those papers. You first went to the stewardess and borrowed a needle and thread and then asked permission to sit in her room and do a little necessary sewing----"
The girl blushed hotly: "The contemptible creature!" she exclaimed.
"A little sewing," repeated Guild, coolly. "And," he continued, "you sewed those papers to your clothing. The stewardess saw you do it."
"Because," he said calmly, "I must have them, and it makes it more awkward for us both than if you had merely put them back into your satchel."
"You--you intend--to----" Her amazement checked her, then flashed out into wrath.
"Do you know," she said, "that you are becoming impudent?"
"Karen," he retorted very quietly, "a man of my sort isn't _impudent_. But, possibly, he might be _insolent_--if he chooses. And perhaps I shall choose."
Checked, her lips still quivering, the girl, despite her anger, understood what he meant--knew that she was confronting a man of her own caste, where insolence indeed might happen, but nothing more plebeian.
"I--spoke to you as though you were an American," she said slowly. "I forgot----"
"I am answering you as an American!" he interrupted drily. "Make no mistake about that country; it breeds plenty of men who have every right to answer you as I do!"
She bit her lip; her eyes filled and she averted her face. Presently the cab stopped.
Whether Guild had paid for the entire compartment or whether it happened so she did not inquire, but they had the place to themselves, so far.
Guild paid no further attention to her except to lay a couple of Tauchnitz novels beside her on the seat. After that he opened a newspaper which he had brought away with him from the Consulate, and began to read it without troubling to ask her permission.
As the paper hid his perfectly expressionless face she ventured to glance at it from time to time. It was the _New York Herald_ and on the sheet turned toward her she was perfectly able to read something that interested her and sent faint shivers creeping over her as she ended it: