Will you let me
help you?"
"You can't," she answered, shaking her head. "No one could."
"How can you tell that?" he asked eagerly. "Perhaps I know more
already than you think."
"I daresay you do," she said slowly. "I have thought that a long
time. Will you tell me one thing? --Are you his friend or not?"
There was no need for Dunn to ask to whom the pronoun she used
referred.
"I am so much not his friend," he answered as quietly and
deliberately as she had spoken. "That it's either his life or mine."
At that she drew back in a startled way as though his words had gone
beyond her expectations.
"How do I know I can trust you?" she said presently, half to herself,
half to him.
"You can," he said, and it was as though he flung the whole of his
enigmatic and vivid personality into those two words.
"You can," he said again. "Absolutely."
"I must think," she muttered, pressing her hands to her head. "So
much depends--how can I trust you? Why should I--why?"
"Because I'll trust you first," he answered with a touch of
exultation in his manner. "Listen to me and I'll tell you
everything. And that means I put my life in your hands. Well,
that's nothing; I would do that any time; but other people's lives
will be in your power, too--yes, and everything I'm here for,
everything. Now listen."
"Not now," she interrupted sharply.
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