There was something in the tone of the whimsicality that alarmed her.  It covered a desperation which she felt instinctively.

Why was he talking thus to her, almost a stranger?  Surely it could not have been for that that Bella LeMar had brought them together.

Gradually it came to her.  The man had really, honestly been struck by her from the moment of their introduction.  Instead of allowing others, to say nothing of himself, to lead her on in the path he and Mrs. Noble and the others had entered, he was taking the bit in his teeth, like a high-strung race horse, and was running away, now that Bella LeMar for the moment did not hold the reins.  He was warning her openly against the game!

Somehow the action appealed to Constance.  It was genuine, disinterested.  Secretly, it was flattering.  Still, she said nothing about Bella, nor about Mrs. Noble.  Halsey seemed to appreciate the fact.  His face showed plainly as if he had said it that here, at least, was one woman who was not always talking about others.

There had been a rapid-fire suddenness about his confidences which had fascinated her.

“Are you in business?” she ventured.

“Oh, yes,” he laughed grimly.  “I’m in business—­treasurer of the Exporting & Manufacturing Company.”

“But,” she pursued, looking him frankly in the face, “I should think you’d be afraid to—­er—­become involved—­”

“I know I am being watched,” he broke in impatiently.  “You see, I’m bonded, and the bonding companies keep a pretty sharp lookout on your habits.  Oh, the crash will come some day.  Until it does—­let us make the most of it—­while it lasts.”

He said the words bitterly.  Constance was confirmed in her original suspicion of him now.  Halsey was getting deeper and deeper into the moral quagmire.  She had seen his interest in Mrs. Noble.  Had Bella LeMar hoped that she, too, would play will-o ’-the-wisp in leading him on?

Over the still half-eaten supper she watched Halsey keenly.  A thousand questions about himself, about Mrs. Noble, rushed through her mind.  Should she be perfectly frank?

“Are you—­are you using the company’s money!” she asked at length pointedly.

He had not expected the question, and his evident intention was to deny it.  But he met her eye.  He tried to escape it, but could not.  What was there about this little woman that had compelled his attention and interest from the moment he had been introduced?

Quickly he tried to reason it out in his heart.  It was not that she was physically attractive to him.  Mrs. Noble was that It was not that fascination which Bella aroused, the adventuress, the siren, the gorgon.  In Constance there was something different.  She was a woman of the world, a man’s woman.  Then, too, she was so brutally frank in inviting his confidences.

Over and over he turned the answer he had intended to make.  He caught her eye again and knew that it was of no use.