She positively thought that he blushed.
"As an adjunct to thought," she said, moved by a conciliatory spirit.
He looked at the invaluable toy which the young girl had tantalisingly placed close to his hand: then he forced himself to look all round the coffee-room: at Polly, at the waitresses, at the piles of pallid buns upon the counter.

But, involuntarily, his mild blue eyes wandered back lovingly to the long piece of string, on which his playful imagination no doubt already saw a series of knots which would be equally tantalising to tie and to untie.
"Tell me about the theft at the English Provident Bank," suggested Polly condescendingly.
He looked at her, as if she had proposed some mysterious complicity in an unheard-of crime.

Finally his lean fingers sought the end of the piece of string, and drew it towards him.

His face brightened up in a moment.
"There was an element of tragedy in that particular robbery," he began, after a few moments of beatified knotting, "altogether different to that connected with most crimes; a tragedy which, as far as I am concerned, would seal my lips for ever, and forbid them to utter a word, which might lead the police on the right track." "Your lips," suggested Polly sarcastically, "are, as far as I can see, usually sealed before our long-suffering, incompetent police and--" "And you should be the last to grumble at this," he quietly interrupted, "for you have spent some very pleasant half-hours already, listening to what you have termed my 'cock-and-bull' stories.

You know the English Provident Bank, of course, in Oxford Street; there were plenty of sketches of it at the time in the illustrated papers.