Читать книгу White Magic. A Novel онлайн

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After many days—not so very many, either—when their friendship was well into the stage of intimacy, she began to try to draw him out on the subject of women. At first she went about it adroitly—and an adroiter cross-examiner never put questions seemingly more trivial in tones seemingly more careless or lay in wait behind eyes seemingly more innocent. But she set her traps in vain. Of the love affairs of other men he would talk, taking even more than the necessary care to avoid things a young girl was supposed not to know or understand. Of his own love affairs he would say nothing—not a hint, not so much as a suggestion that romance had ever gladdened his youth. That chance allusion to the mysterious Syrian woman was his first and last indiscretion, if anything so vague could be called an indiscretion. So, she abandoned the tactics of guile and attacked him frankly.

“You certainly are trustworthy,” said she. “You have a wonderful sense of honor.”

“What’s this about?” inquired he, ignorant of her train of thought.