Their heads sank down after this, and Wolf automatically fumbled for his cigarettes and then consciously let them go.

“I’ve never felt as much at ease with anyone as with you, Christie⁠ ⁠… except perhaps my mother. No, not even except her.”

“I think we are alike,” she said quietly. And then, with the same schoolgirlish simple amusement that had struck him before, “We’re too alike, I think, to do much harm to anyone!”

Her face grew suddenly grave, and she stretched out her thin arm and touched Wolf lightly on the knee. “You must be prepared for one thing,” she said. “You must be prepared to find that I haven’t a trace of what people call the ‘moral sense.’ ”