"I thought you were an exceedingly tired girl."
"I was. Is that all you thought about it?"
"You know," he said, laughing, "when a man is asleep he doesn't do much thinking."
"About my sleeping against your shoulder?"
"I was not," she said. "I was contented, and I thought continually about our friendship--except when what I was doing made me uneasy about--what I was doing.... Isn't it curious that a girl could do a thing like that and feel comfortable except when she remembered that a girl doesn't usually do a thing like that?"
She said: "Always my inclination has been, from a child, to explain things to myself. But I can't explain you, yet. You are very different, you know."
"Yes, please. I've found that out.... Tell me, do you really mean to go today?"
"In the Guides," she said, as though to herself.
"The Guides," she repeated, looking rather vacantly at a sun spot that waxed and waned on the dry carpet of fir-needles at her feet. "I have seen them. They are odd, with their furry headgear and their green jackets and boots and cherry-red breeches.... I have danced with officers of the Guides in Brussels.... I never thought that my first man friend would be an officer in the Guides."
"I never thought my best friend among women would be the first woman I ever robbed," he said rather grimly.
"Oh, but you haven't done it yet! And I don't see how you propose to do it."
"Not if you are going away. How can you? The only way I can see is for you to stay at Quellenheim in hopes that I might forget to lock my door some night. You know," she said, almost wistfully, "I _might_ forget--if you remained long enough."
She was so pretty in her perplexity, so utterly without art in her frankness and curiosity that the impulse to mystify and torment her possessed him.
"Will you bet that I shall not have those papers in my possession within ten minutes?" he asked.
She gazed at him incredulously, then suddenly her cheeks lost their colour and she stood up under the fir-tree.
"Must I take them or will you give them up, Karen?" he asked, laughing, as he rose.
She took a step backward, away from him. The tree-trunk checked her.
"You know I can't give them to you," she said unsteadily. "It would be dishonourable."