"All right. I'll try it. What is it?"
"Then tell me first, please, just for curiosity, what is it makes you prefer arrest here to going with us into Cornwall to-morrow?"
"That's not fair, Miss Varris!" Preston had to smile in spite of himself. "You know that I would rather go with you to-morrow than do anything else I could choose. You know that—"
"I do!" the girl returned frankly. "Otherwise I wouldn't ask you why you do not come. But since I do believe that, why don't you come?"
"You know!"
"Because you consider it more necessary than ever that we should have word of you from some responsible person before it is right for us to trust you further?"
"Yes."
"Then if we had such word, you would not question your right to come with us—and escape the police?"
"Of course not."
140
