but I do. I care horribly. Just seeing him has turned my whole life upside-down. I love him. I want him. I'll walk all over Africa barefoot till I find him, and I'll make him care for me. I'd die for him. I'd work for him, slave for him, steal for him, even beg or borrow for him! There—now you know!"
Suzanne looked at me for a long time.
"You're very un-English, Gipsy girl," she said at last. "There's not a scrap of the sentimental about you. I've never met any one who was at once so practical and so passionate. I shall never care for any one like that—mercifully for me—and yet—and yet I envy you, Gipsy girl. It's something to be able to care. Most people can't. But what a mercy for your little doctor man that you didn't marry him. He doesn't sound at all the sort of individual who would enjoy keeping high explosive in the house! So there's to be no cabling to Lord Nasby?"
I shook my head.
"And yet you believe him to be innocent?"
"I also believe that innocent people can be hanged."
"Hm! yes. But, Anne dear, you can face facts, face them now. In spite of all you say, he may have murdered this woman."
"No," I said. "He didn't."
"That's sentiment."
"No, it isn't. He might have killed her. He may even have followed her there with that idea in his mind. But he wouldn't take a bit of black cord and strangle her with it. If he'd done it, he would have strangled her with his bare hands."
Suzanne gave a little shiver. Her eyes narrowed appreciatively.
"Hm! Anne, I am beginning to see why you find this young man of yours so attractive!"
