"Odette," he said gently and walked round to her, laying his hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?" she asked, without looking up.
"Tell me all there is to be told," he said. "I could help you. I want to help you."
"Why do you want to help me?" she asked simply.
"Because I love you," he said, and his voice shook.
It did not seem to him that he was talking. The words came of their own volition. He had no more intention of telling her he loved her, indeed he had no more idea that he did love her, than Whiteside would have had. Yet he knew he spoke the truth and that a power greater than he had framed the words and put them on his lips.
The effect on the girl seemed extraordinary to him. She did not shrink back, she did not look surprised. She showed no astonishment whatever. She just brought her eyes back to the table and said: "Oh!"
That calm, almost uncannily calm acceptance of a fact which Tarling had not dared to breathe to himself, was the second shock of the evening.
It was as though she had known it all along. He was on his knees by her side and his arm was about her shoulders, even before his brain had willed the act.
"My girl, my girl," he said gently. "Won't you please tell me?"
Her head was still bent and her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible.
"What you know of this business," he said. "Don't you realise how every new development brings you more and more under suspicion?"
"The murder of Thornton Lyne? I know nothing of that."
She made no response to that tender arm of his, but sat rigid. Something in her attitude chilled him and he dropped her hand and rose. When she looked up she saw that his face was white and set. He walked to the door and unlocked it.
"I'm not going to ask you any more," he said quietly. "You know best why you came to me to-night--I suppose you followed me and took a room. I heard somebody going upstairs soon after I arrived."
"Do you want--this?" she asked and pointed to the wallet on the table.
She got up to her feet unsteadily and swayed toward him. In a second he was by her side, his arms about her. She made no resistance, but rather he felt a yielding towards him which he had missed before. Her pale face was upturned to his and he stooped and kissed her.