"Very," the man admitted: the time was by when fencing were anything but waste of time. "I am worried about getting you back to Town . . ."
"That only goes to show," Lanyard obliquely remarked, "one should never tell you anything one expects you to forget."
"I have forgotten nothing you have ever told me about yourself--nothing, least of all, that had to do with another woman's affection for you."
"Still, I am very greedy, I don't like sharing even the least of your thoughts with any other woman."
"Oh!" he laughed--"but Liane isn't a woman, except professionally."
"You are tantalizing me all the same when you don't tell me what she had to say--and how in Heaven's name she guessed you were dining here--and why she resurrected that old nom de guerre instead of calling for you by your right name."
"I'm afraid Liane didn't guess, I suspect somebody told her we had stopped here to dine--"
The teasing half-smile with which Eve had been regarding her lover was erased. "You think we were followed--!"
"But why should she have harked back to 'Paul Martin'?"
"I fancy her reason for that is implicit in Liane's message, a brief one--delivered, if it matters, by a stranger's tongue--'prenez garde'."
Eve nodded thoughtful confirmation of a private conjecture. "You are in some danger?" Not at all deceived by the shrug that sought to depreciate the weight of that term, she glanced quickly to and from the little party that was, just then, noisily making merry at its table across the room. In response, another movement of Lanyard's shoulders disclaimed intelligence: "Perhaps . . . Who knows?"
"I know; but it's a fairish yarn, and the car ought to be here any minute--I'll hardly have time before we leave. So let me first of all throw myself upon your mercy, Eve, beg you to trust me."
"I mean: trust me to know what is best . . ."
Analysis of this ambiguity knitted a speculative frown. "You're going to ask something of me I won't want to do."
"It is dangerous for us to attempt the journey back to New York together."
"Dangerous," Eve objected, "isn't definite enough."
"It would appear that one whom I have recently been obliged to humiliate plans to pay me out tonight. He will fail--trust me for that--but I shall be more free to make him see the error of his ways if I can feel sure the harm meant for me can't by mischance be visited upon you instead."