You can get any number of competent girls for three
dollars."
He rested his chin on his upturned palm. "But, my dear Miss Robson, I
happen to want _you_."
She thought of any number of cheap, obvious retorts that might have been
flung back at his straightforward admission, but instead she said, with
equal frankness:
"That's just what I don't understand."
He threw her a puzzled look and the usual placid light in his eyes
quickened to resentful impatience.
"Is that a necessary part of the contract, Miss Robson?"
She caught her breath. His tone of annoyance was sharp and unexpected.
There was a suggestion of Flint's masculine arrogance in his voice. She
felt how absurd was her cross-examination of him, of how absurd, under
the circumstances, would have been her cross-examination of anybody
ready and willing to give her work to do and an ample wage in the
bargain, and yet, for all the force of his reply, she knew it to be a
well-bred if not a deliberate evasion.
"You mean it is none of my business, don't you?" she contrived to laugh
back at him.
His reply was a further surprise. "Yes, precisely," he said, with an
ominous thinning of the lips.
She rose instinctively to meet this thrust and she was conscious that
even Flint had never managed so to disturb her. She glanced about
hastily as if measuring the room in a swift impulse toward escape.
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