After a moment she lifted out the cluster of violet-scented orchids, drew the long pin from them, and fastened them to her blouse.
"That you should--think to offer them--to _me_----"
He looked up, and his grey eyes seemed to be laughing, but his mouth--that perplexing, humorous, inscrutable mouth of his remained grave and determined.
"Karen," he said, "if you only understood how much I do like you, you wouldn't perhaps deal so mercilessly with me."
"You are. You made me use force with you when you should not have resisted. And now you have done something more merciless yet."
"Dear--look at me. No--in the eyes. Now look at me while I say, as seriously and as gently as I know how, that _I am going to have those papers_!... You know I mean what I say.... That is all--dear."
Her eyes fell and she looked at her orchids.
"Why do you speak that way to me--after giving me these?"
"What have orchids to do with a man's duty?"
"Why? Because we are friends, if you will let us be."
"I was willing--am still--in spite of--everything. You know I am. If I can forgive you what you did to me in our stateroom last night, surely, surely Kervyn, you won't take any more chances with my forgiveness--will you?"
He said: "I shall have to if you force me to it. Karen--I never liked any woman as much as I like you. We have known each other two days and a night. But in that time we both have lived a long, long time."
"Then--you know me now as well as you ever will know me. Better than any other woman has ever known me. When my mind is made up that a certain thing is to be done, I always try to do it, Karen.... And I know that I ought to have those papers.... And that I am going to have them. Is that clear--Karen, dear?"
She remained silent, brushing her orchids with her finger-tips, absent-eyed, serene. After a moment he thought that the ghost of a smile was hovering on her lips, but he was not sure.
Three times they were obliged to change cars after passing through Utrecht. Night fell; the last compartment into which they had been crowded was filled with Dutch cavalry officers, big, talkative fellows in their field uniforms and jingling equipments, civil to Guild, courteous to Karen, and all intensely interested in the New York newspaper which Guild offered them and which they all appeared to be quite able to read.