Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/320

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300
THE CLOSING NET

"Workman's blouse, black straw hat, grizzled beard."

Léontine knit her brows. I grew suspicious.

"May I help you to wine?" I asked.

"No, thanks. I never take it with déjeuner. But help yourself, please."

Thanks. I also am abstemious," I answered.

Léontine shot me a swift look, then leaned over and laid her hand on my sleeve. Her eyes were positively melting and it seemed to me there was the slightest quiver in her voice.

"Frank," she whispered, "is it possible that you do not trust me?" The swift colour rose and spread over her high, Slavic cheekbones, which were soft and rounded, yet high and of a Cossack prominence that lent character and intensity to her passionate face, though in no way diminishing its sensuous beauty. "Don't you think me loyal, Frank?" she pleaded.

"It's your loyalty that keeps my hand in my pocket," I answered, with a sort of dry grin. "I don't mind giving it to you straight, my girl, that when I spotted Chu-Chu in front of Le Bon Cocher I made up my mind that you and Ivan and a few others had set a little trap for me over here."

Léontine's fresh caviar stopped halfway to her expectant mouth and she looked at me with her amber eyes wide open. Usually you got only an impression of them between a double fringe of long, curved lashes black as ink.

"Then what made you come in here," she cried, "if you thought me capable of treachery of that sort to the man I—I love?" she whispered hotly,