The Chapters

The cab went fast down the empty street. Brett kept her eyes closed. I could see the lights pass across her face whenever we went under a lamp.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the Parc Montsouris.”

“What for?”

“You said to drive around.”

“I didn’t say to drive all the way around Paris.” She sat up. “Tell him to take us to the Dôme.”

“The Dôme?”

“Yes. I want to sit outside.”

I leaned forward and spoke to the driver. He turned at the next crossing. Brett settled back again and put her hand on my sleeve.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“No.”

“You sounded angry.”

“I was telling him where to go.”

“You do that very well.”

She took her hand away and looked out of the window. We crossed a square where there were no people and a man was washing down the pavement in front of a restaurant. The water ran around the legs of the chairs stacked outside. The driver slowed for a cart drawn by two horses and then went on.

“It was awful in there,” Brett said.

“The dancing?”

“The whole business.”

“You seemed to be enjoying it.”

“I suppose I did.”

We rode for a while without talking. At a crossing a taxi pulled up close beside us. There were two women in it, both wearing hats with wide brims. One of them looked into our cab and then the taxis went off in different directions.

“Would you rather go back to them?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly.”

“You had a date.”

“They can keep it.”

“They’ll be looking for you.”

“They know where to look.”

I wanted her to stay with me all night.

The driver pulled up by the Dôme. There were people at the tables outside and the light from the café fell across the pavement. Brett got out while I paid. She waited with one hand on the back of a chair and looked at the people as if she were deciding whether any of them belonged there. We took a table at the end of the terrace. A waiter wiped it and brought us drinks.

“Who were the women?” Brett asked.

“What women?”

“In the taxi.”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you might.”

We drank. The boulevard was still busy, though the shops were shut. A man came out of the café carrying a canvas and stood beside our table while he tried to get a cigarette lit. He had to turn his back to the breeze. When he had it going he walked away with the canvas under his arm.

“You’re better now,” I said.

“I’m not. I’m simply sitting down.”

“That’s generally an improvement.”

“On dancing with that lot, certainly.”

She stirred the ice in her glass. She had taken off her hat in the cab and her hair was pressed flat at one side. She saw me looking at it and put up her hand.

“Is it dreadful?”

“No.”

“You can say if it is.”

“It’s fine.”

“I ought to have brought a comb.”

“You don’t need one.”

“That’s what you always say.”

The waiter came by. Brett ordered another brandy and soda. I asked for a beer. It came cold and I drank half of it before I set it down.

“I met a man called Philip Ashcroft last week,” she said.

“I never heard of him.”

“He’s got a great deal of money. He came over from London and somebody took me to dinner with him.”

“What does he do?”

“Nothing that I could make out. He owns things.”

“That can take time.”

“He wants me to go down to Biarritz.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know. He may have forgotten he asked.”

“Did he seem likely to forget?”

“No. He has a secretary to remember for him.”

She smiled at that and drank some of her brandy.

“Is he young?”

“Not especially.”

“Is he nice?”

“He listens when you talk. That’s nice at dinner.”

A motor-car went past with a loose piece of metal rattling somewhere underneath it. We could hear it after it had turned the corner. Brett watched the street until it was gone.

“You could go to Biarritz,” I said.

“I could.”

“You’d like the sea.”

“I know what the sea looks like.”

“There’s good food.”

“There’s good food here.”

We looked at each other. Brett put down her glass and moved it a little farther from the edge of the table.

“Do you think I ought to go?” she asked.

“I think you ought to do what you want.”

“That’s no help.”

“What did you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.”

Neither of us spoke for a time. Inside, somebody knocked over a chair and there was a great deal of laughing about it. Brett turned to see who it was, but the door was behind her and she did not turn far enough.

“Perhaps I’ll go back to London,” she said.

“You said that last month.”

“I might mean it this time.”

“You might.”

“I don’t like you when you’re agreeable, Jake.”

“I’ll stop.”

“Don’t do that either.”

The waiter came to clear a table near us. Brett watched him stack the saucers on his tray.

“What happened to the girl you brought?” she asked.

“She’s dancing.”

“You gave her money?”

“I left some for her.”

“She may not take it.”

“She hasn’t had the chance yet.”

“Will you go back?”

“I told the woman at the bar to keep it if she went out with somebody.”

“And you want to know if she did.”

“I want the fifty francs.”

Brett laughed. “That’s honest.”

“It’s fifty francs.”

“Then you must go and fetch it.”

“I will after this.”

“I’ll wait here.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I said I would.”

I finished the beer. Brett said she wanted another drink, and I ordered it for her. The waiter brought it and I paid him. She was looking at the street again when I got up.

“Don’t be long,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“Jake.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

I took a taxi back toward the Panthéon. There was more traffic along the boulevard than I had expected. Two men were carrying a table across the road and made us stop while they got it through a doorway. The driver complained to me about them. I agreed with him and he talked a little more. When he let me out near the bal I gave him the fare and walked down the steep street.

The door of the bal was open. The policeman had gone. The accordion was playing and there were more people inside now, men from the quarter and girls who had come in after us. They danced close together. The proprietor was still on his high stool, his ankle bells going as he played. It was hotter than before.

The patronne saw me at the bar.

“You have come back, Monsieur.”

“Is the girl still here?”

She looked toward the dancing-floor. “Certainly. She dances very well.”

“Did she ask for the envelope?”

“No. She did not ask for you either.”

“Will you give it back to me?”

She bent and took it from a shelf under the zinc. The seal was unbroken. I put it in my pocket and ordered a beer. The patronne drew it and watched me drink.

“You left very early,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And now you come back.”

“Yes.”

“It is a pleasant evening for you.”

“It’s a long one.”

Georgette was dancing with the dark fellow called Lett. Her hat was off, and she had pinned her hair up badly, so that a piece of it had come down across her cheek. She saw me over his shoulder. She did not change her expression. When the music stopped, she said something to him and came over to the bar.

“I thought you’d gone,” she said.

“I did.”

“I can see that.”

“Do you want a drink?”

“I’ve got one.” She pointed to a glass at a table. “Where’s your friend?”

“Waiting for me.”

“Oh.” She looked at the glass in my hand. “You came back for a beer?”

“I came back for my coat,” I said.

“You were wearing it when you went out.”

“I forgot something else.”

“I know.”

The patronne wiped the bar between us, though there was nothing on it. Georgette picked up my glass and drank from it, then set it down.

“You could have told me you were leaving.”

“You were dancing.”

“One can stop.”

“I know. I should have told you.”

She shrugged. Someone called her from the floor. She looked that way and then back at me.

“Are you having a good time?” I asked.

“They dance. They buy drinks. It’s a bal.”

“That sounds all right.”

“It is all right.” She studied me. “Your friend is pretty.”

“Yes.”

“You’re sick and she isn’t?”

“I didn’t ask her.”

Georgette laughed with her mouth closed. She had a better smile that way. The accordion started up again and the man on the floor held out his hand to her.

“I have to go,” I said.

“So go.”

“Good night, Georgette.”

“Good night, Jacob.”

She went back to the dancing-floor. I finished the beer and put down the glass. The patronne nodded to me as I went out. In the street it was cool. I walked up to the square to find a cab, but there were none waiting there. I went on toward the boulevard. At the corner a newspaper seller had his papers spread out on a board and was smoking while he waited for someone to buy one. I bought a paper to read the hour on its front page. It had been printed too early to help. A cab came along before I could get any farther, and I took it to the Dôme.

Brett was still at the table. There was a man standing beside her, talking, and she was looking past him at the traffic. He left when he saw me coming. Brett watched him go.

“Was that Ashcroft?” I asked.

“No. I’ve never seen him before.”

“You could have told him that.”

“I did. Several times.”

I sat down. Her second drink was finished and my chair was just where I had left it. The waiter came over, but we did not order anything.

“Did you get your money?” Brett asked.

“Yes.”

“And your girl?”

“She’s still dancing.”

“Are you pleased?”

“I’m glad she’s having a good time.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“It’s what I know.”

The man who had been talking to Brett came out of the café again. He saw us and crossed to the other side of the boulevard. Brett followed him with her eyes.

“He wanted to take me to breakfast,” she said. “It seems there’s a place open all night.”

“You must have looked hungry.”

“He said I looked lonely.”

“That was more enterprising.”

“He said it very kindly.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. He was drunk.”

We got up and I paid the waiter. It was late enough that people had begun to leave the terrace, though a group at the far end looked settled until morning. We walked toward the river. Brett took my arm as we passed a rough place in the pavement and kept it afterward. The shops along the way were dark. Once we passed a bakery with light behind its shutters and the smell of bread coming out into the street.

“I could eat breakfast,” Brett said.

“The man knew his business.”

“I don’t want to meet him again.”

We found a café with its lights on and had coffee and rolls. The coffee was hot. Brett broke a roll in two and ate one half. She put the other half on my plate. A man at the counter was asleep on his folded arms, and the woman behind it let him stay there. We ate without talking. When Brett finished her coffee she said she was cold, though it was warm in the café.

Outside, the sky above the roofs had begun to go grey. We walked down to the quay. A few carts were moving along the road, and there was a boat tied up below us with no one visible on it. Brett stopped by the wall and looked down at the water.

“You ought to go home,” I said.

“So ought you.”

“I will.”

“You always do what you say.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re going to say something tiresome now.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then don’t start.”

We walked as far as a bridge. I found a taxi coming toward us and waved it down. The driver opened the door. Brett gave him her address and got in. She sat with one hand on the lowered window.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Come late.”

“All right.”

She looked at me a moment and then told the driver to go. I stood there until the taxi turned off the quay. Then I walked home along the river. It was dawn, and the first light had reached the upper windows across the water.

When Mary woke, the rain had stopped beating against the carriage window. There was only a wet blur of fields beyond the glass, and now and then a light which flashed past and was gone. Mrs. Medlock had put on her mantle and was fastening the clasp at her throat.

"We're near there," she said. "You'd best straighten your hat. You've slept it crooked."

Mary put up her hand to the black crêpe hat and pulled it straight. She was cold and stiff, and she did not like being told that she had looked foolish while she slept. The train began to go more slowly, with little jerks and rattlings, and at last stopped beside a platform on which two lamps burned in the damp air.

Mrs. Medlock looked out before she opened the carriage door. Then she made a sound of surprise and stood quite still.

"Well, I never!" she said under her breath.

A man was waiting a little apart from the porter. He wore a dark coat with its collar turned up, and the light of the nearest lamp fell on one side of his face. Mary knew who he must be before Mrs. Medlock spoke. He was not old, as she had somehow expected, but his face looked tired and shut up. He stood with one shoulder higher than the other and held his head rather bent forward.

"Mr. Craven," said Mrs. Medlock, getting out in haste. "I didn't know you'd come yourself, sir."

"Neither did I," he answered.

That was a queer answer, Mary thought. Mrs. Medlock seemed to think so, too, but she only turned to help Mary down. Mary would not take her hand. She stepped onto the platform and found Mr. Archibald Craven looking at her. His eyes rested on her thin face for a moment. She had a strange feeling that he had meant to look at her and wished, now that he had done it, that he had not.

"This is Miss Mary, sir," Mrs. Medlock said.

"Yes," said Mr. Craven.

Mary made a stiff little bow because she could think of nothing else to do. He did not come nearer. His gaze moved to the small trunk which the porter was lifting out, and he told the man where to put it. After that he turned toward the station exit. Mrs. Medlock followed him, and Mary followed Mrs. Medlock.

Outside, a carriage waited under the station lamp. Its horses moved their heads and stamped on the wet stones. Mr. Craven spoke to the coachman and got in first. Mary supposed he would drive away by himself, but Mrs. Medlock directed her into the carriage and climbed in after her. Mr. Craven sat opposite them, so that Mary had to look either at him or at the window. She chose the window.

For a little while there were houses, dark except for a lighted pane here and there. Then the road became rougher, and the wheels made a sound on it which went on so steadily that Mary began to count the jolts. She stopped after twenty-three. There was nothing to be seen through the glass but her own faint face and, behind it, a darker space than the sky.

"Is that the moor?" she asked before she remembered that she had not intended to ask questions.

"Aye," said Mrs. Medlock. "We're on it now."

Mary pressed her forehead against the cold pane. She had imagined the moor might be a kind of great yard with trees at its edges. There were no edges to it that she could see. The road ran under the carriage lamps into a waste of wet earth and low, dark things which bent in the wind. She could not tell whether they were bushes or grass. It was the first place she had ever seen which seemed to have no one belonging to it.

Mr. Craven said nothing. Once Mary glanced at him and saw that he was looking out of his own window. His face was turned away, but she could see the raised shoulder under his coat. Basil had called him horrid, and Mrs. Medlock had said he would take no trouble over her. Yet he had come to the station. Mary wondered why, and was angry with herself for wondering about a person who would not speak to her.

The carriage stopped so suddenly that Mrs. Medlock caught at the strap beside her. One of the horses snorted. The coachman called something, and Mr. Craven let down his window.

"What is it?"

"Sheep, sir. One's laid hersel' fair across t' road."

They heard the coachman get down and speak to the animal. Then he called to someone farther away, and another voice answered him out of the darkness. Mrs. Medlock leaned forward to see, but her window was clouded with wet.

"There must be a flock going over," she said. "They've no sense where a carriage is concerned."

Mr. Craven opened the door and stepped down. Mary could hear him speaking to the coachman in a voice too low for her to make out the words. She wanted to see the sheep. More than that, she wanted to see what the moor looked like when she was standing on it instead of passing over it behind glass.

She opened the door on her side and got out.

"Miss Mary!" Mrs. Medlock called. "Come back this minute. You'll wet your feet."

Mary did not answer at once. The ground at the roadside was soft, and her shoes sank into it a little. A sharp wind blew across her face and made her catch her breath. It smelled of wet earth and something dry and strange underneath, though the rain had fallen on everything. She could hear the horses, the coachman, and a low rustling ahead of them. Beyond the small patch made bright by the lamps there was darkness in every direction.

She took three steps away from the carriage. The wind was stronger there. It tugged at her hat and pushed her thin dress against her legs. She had never been anywhere in which there was so much room for it to blow. For one minute she stood quite alone in it, and she forgot to be cross.

A white shape moved in the road. Another followed, and then several more. The coachman and the man who had answered him were driving the sheep along. One stout sheep stood its ground until the man laid a hand against its side. It moved then, with a foolish little bound, and the way was clear.

Mr. Craven came back past Mary. He stopped when he saw her out of the carriage, but he only said, "You will be cold."

"I am not cold," Mary answered.

He looked at the wet ground by her shoes and got into the carriage. Mrs. Medlock held the door open for her with a face which showed plainly what she thought of the matter.

"There's no telling what may be out on the moor after dark," she said as Mary climbed in. "And your feet are wet, whatever you say."

"They are only damp," said Mary.

The coachman mounted again, and they went on. Mary turned to look through the little pane at the back, but the place where she had stood was already gone. She could still feel the wind on her cheeks. She wished Mrs. Medlock had not spoken as if the moor were something to be kept away from.

The drive seemed a long one after that. At last the carriage passed beneath an arch, and the horses' hoofs sounded different on the road. Mary saw black shapes of trees against a sky which was beginning to clear. Presently a great house rose before them. Some of its windows were lighted, but there were many more which were dark. Mary tried to count them and gave it up.

The carriage stopped before a broad flight of steps. A servant opened the house door, and Mrs. Medlock hurried Mary inside. The entrance hall was so large that their footsteps sounded small in it. There were pictures on the walls and heavy pieces of furniture which stood in the shadows as if no one had moved them for years. A fire burned somewhere beyond an open doorway, but Mary could not see it.

Mr. Craven came in behind them. He spoke quietly to Mrs. Medlock, who listened with her head bent. Mary caught only the word "morning." Then he went up a staircase at the far end of the hall. He did not say good night to her, and she did not say good night to him. She watched him until he turned out of sight.

"Come along," Mrs. Medlock said. "It's late, and you'll want your supper."

She led Mary along a passage and up another staircase. The house seemed to have passages enough for several houses, all joined together in a way Mary could not understand. Lamps burned at wide intervals, leaving dark spaces between them. She looked at the pictures they passed, but could make out little except pale faces and hands which appeared out of the dimness.

At the end of a passage Mrs. Medlock opened a door. The room within was warm and had a fire, a small bed, and a table set near the hearth. It was a good room, Mary supposed, but the furniture was too large for it, and the curtains shut out whatever might have been beyond the windows.

"This is where you're to sleep," said Mrs. Medlock. "I'll have your things brought up. Sit down by the fire."

Mary sat because she was tired. Mrs. Medlock went out, and for a few minutes she was alone. She held one foot toward the fire and saw that Mrs. Medlock had been right about her shoes. They were wet at the edges. She drew them back under her dress before the woman returned.

It was a man who came in with the supper. He was broad across the shoulders and carried a tray on which there was bread, hot broth, and a glass of milk. He put it on the table and looked at Mary with a face which was not unfriendly.

"Tha'll be reet glad on it, I'll warrant," he said. "It's a long road ower t' moor, an' a sharp neet for a little lass."

Mary stared at him. She had understood "moor" and "little," but the rest seemed to run together in a way she had never heard before.

"What did you say?" she asked.

He repeated it, more slowly, though the words were much the same. Mary drew herself up.

"I cannot understand you," she said.

"Can tha not?" he answered, and looked surprised. "Well, there's a thing."

"I cannot understand you when you speak like that," Mary said.

Mrs. Medlock appeared in the doorway in time to hear her.

"He's saying you'll be glad of your supper," she told her. "Eat it while it's hot."

The man glanced from one of them to the other. "I reckon she'll learn our way of talk soon enough," he said to Mrs. Medlock. Then he went out, and Mary watched the door close behind him.

"Does every one here speak like that?" she asked.

"Some do. Now take your broth."

Mary tasted it. She had meant to say that she did not want any, but it was hot and she was hungry. She ate the bread as well. Mrs. Medlock unpacked the small trunk while she ate, putting away what was needed for the night and leaving the rest where it was. She told Mary that a woman would come in the morning to help her dress, and that she was to stay in her room until she was told where to go.

"Mr. Craven was plain enough about that," she said.

"What did he say?" asked Mary.

Mrs. Medlock shut the trunk. "He said you were to have what you needed. That's what concerns you."

Mary put down her spoon. It was easy to see that Mrs. Medlock meant to tell her nothing more. She thought again of her uncle's raised shoulder as he went up the stairs. She had seen him at the station and ridden beside him all that way, and she knew scarcely more about him than she had known on the train.

When the supper was cleared away, Mrs. Medlock showed her where she was to wash. Mary was too tired to object when the woman helped her out of her black dress. A nightgown had been laid ready on the bed. She put it on and climbed under the covers, which were heavy and warm. Mrs. Medlock lowered the lamp and went to the door.

"If you hear the wind," she said, "pay no mind to it. It gets about these old passages."

Mary listened while her steps went away. The fire settled with a little crack, and the room grew quieter. Wind moved against the window now and then, but it was not as strong as it had been on the moor. She could tell when it came because the curtain stirred a little beside the frame.

She was almost asleep when another sound came. It was faint and seemed to be a long way off inside the house. Something scraped, stopped, and scraped again. Mary opened her eyes. She lay still until she heard it a third time. Then she got out of bed and went to the door.

She had only opened it a little when Mrs. Medlock came round the turn of the passage with a lamp in her hand.

"What are you doing out of bed?"

"What is that sound?" Mary asked.

Mrs. Medlock stopped. For a moment they both listened. The passage was silent.

"It's the wind," she said. "I told you it makes all sorts of sounds here. Get back into bed."

"It did not sound like the wind."

"Well, it was. Shut the door, now, and go to sleep."

Mary shut it because Mrs. Medlock stood waiting. She heard the woman's footsteps go down the passage, and then she heard the faint scrape once more. It seemed to come from somewhere beyond the room, where the passage turned out of sight. She went back to bed and pulled the covers up, but she did not close her eyes.

The lamp burned low. After a while it went out, and Mary lay awake in the dark. Mrs. Medlock had called the sound the wind, but Mary had heard the wind at the window and knew how it sounded there. She decided that she would find out for herself what she had heard.

We had been at home perhaps half an hour when I saw the falling star. My wife had gone upstairs, and I was standing at the open window of my study, still looking towards the railway lights she had pointed out. The music of the excursionists had died away. Except for an occasional movement of a train, the country seemed asleep.

The thing came out of the south-west, high above the trees, and crossed the sky in a long, greenish streak. At first I took it for one of those meteors which appear without warning and are gone before one can call another person to see them. But its flight lasted longer than I expected, and the light increased as it descended. For an instant the roofs of Chertsey and the nearer fields stood out in a pallid illumination. Then the streak vanished behind a dark bank of trees in the direction of Ottershaw, and there followed a low sound, less like an explosion than the shutting of some enormous door at a great distance.

I called to my wife, but by the time she reached the study there was only the ordinary starlight. She asked whether it had struck the earth. I said that it might have done so, though I had no means of judging its distance. A faint brightness remained for a little while above the trees, or I fancied that it did. We watched together until it disappeared.

It is strange to remember how readily I accepted an explanation that left me nothing to do. I had watched Mars with Ogilvy and had thought often enough of those nightly outbreaks; yet a light crossing the sky was still, to my mind, a falling star. The sound troubled me more than the light. I went out into the garden and listened, but heard only a late train and, nearer at hand, a dog barking persistently. After a time I came in and went to bed.

The next morning was bright and close. Before breakfast a boy passing our gate told me that something had fallen in a flooded gravel pit on the Ottershaw side of the road, and that people were already going to look at it. He had not seen it himself. By the time I reached the breakfast table I had made up my mind to walk over there. My wife, who had listened to my account of the falling star with more interest than I deserved, said she would come too.

We went by a field path that I knew well. There had been rain some days before, and water stood in the old workings and in the cart ruts beside them, although the path itself was dry. We passed two men carrying spades, who said there was nothing to dig out because the thing lay in water. One of them had heard it fall; the other said it had come down at dawn. Neither would yield the point, and they went on disputing after we had left them.

Beyond a low rise the ground opened upon a shallow pit, irregular in shape, with weeds about its edges and a pool of brown water in the bottom. Some forty or fifty people stood on the bank. Others moved along the higher ground, trying to see past them. Near the middle of the pool lay a great dark object. A little more than half its bulk was under water, and thin white steam rose from the part exposed to the air. It rose also where the water touched the metal, if metal it was, so that a wavering line of vapour marked the pool around it.

I say metal, for that was what I thought it at once. The visible surface was smooth in places and in others marked by long, shallow grooves. Mud adhered to one end. Its shape was difficult to make out from the bank, partly because the water distorted its reflection and partly because steam passed continually before it. It might have been a mass of iron driven into the earth at a slant. It might equally, at a first glance, have been a piece of machinery from some works unknown to me. The surrounding gravel had been thrown outward, and at the farther side of the pit a bank of earth was torn down to the water.

My wife stopped beside me and caught my arm. She had expected a stone, perhaps no larger than a cart wheel. I had expected the same, though I could not have said why. The thing in the pool seemed too large for the narrow streak I had watched across the sky. A man beside us declared that it had killed all the fish. There were no fish in that pit, so far as I knew.

Ogilvy was there before us. He stood on a tongue of firm ground below the crowd, his hat pushed back and a notebook in his hand. He had been measuring the width of the hollow with his walking stick. On seeing me he came up the bank, his boots grey with the damp gravel.

“You saw it last night,” he said, before I had spoken.

I told him what I had seen, and he questioned me closely about its direction and the interval before the sound. When I had finished, he nodded with evident satisfaction.

“A meteorite,” he said. “A remarkably large one, but a meteorite all the same. It has fallen into the old working and heated the water. That accounts for the steam.”

I said that its surface did not look like any meteorite of which I had seen a drawing.

“What did you expect it to look like?” he asked. “They do not arrive in neat specimens for a cabinet. The outer part has been heated and altered in its passage. Half of it is under water, and you have looked at it for scarcely a minute.”

He spoke with the impatience of a man who had already defended his opinion several times that morning. I pointed out the grooves. He followed my finger and studied them through a small glass.

“Marks made in falling, perhaps. Or cracks filled with mud. One cannot tell from here.”

“And the shape?”

“The shape is obscured. You have just said so yourself.”

I reminded him of the outbreaks upon Mars. At that his expression changed, and he shut the glass into its case.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “you are joining two things merely because one followed the other. We see meteors often enough. We saw a light upon Mars. There is no reason to suppose that a body could have travelled from one to the other and arrived here on the night you happened to be watching.”

“There was more than one light,” I said.

“And there is more than one meteor. If this came from Mars, where are your observations of it on the way? You cannot give a direction for its flight through space from a streak seen above a line of trees.”

He was right about that, and I knew it. Yet, looking past him at the dark mass, I could not rid myself of the thought of the invisible thing that had been crossing space while we went about our affairs. Ogilvy took my silence for agreement. He turned back towards the pool, saying that when it cooled and the water was drained we should be able to examine it properly.

My wife had moved a little way along the bank, where several women stood with children. She called me over to see a place where the earth had been pressed down in a broad track before reaching the water. A labourer told us that the thing had struck the slope and slid into the pit. Another said he had seen it land directly in the pool. By then every new arrival seemed to bring an account from someone who had heard or seen more than anyone actually present.

At first the gathering had the quiet of a Sunday crowd before a public building. People spoke in low voices and kept back from the broken edge. The steam gave the object an appearance of work still going on within it, although nothing moved. A man threw a pebble at it. The pebble struck with a sharp sound and fell into the water. Someone called out that he should leave it alone, and for a few minutes nobody went nearer.

I walked with Ogilvy to the lower bank, where we could see the surface more plainly. The exposed portion narrowed towards its upper end, though whether this was its true shape or the effect of the angle at which it lay I could not determine. A dull band crossed it near the water. I took this for a joint and said so. Ogilvy maintained that the band was a change in colour caused by the water and the mud. He drew my attention instead to a rough patch on the side, which he called the crust formed by its passage through the air.

“It has lain here since last night,” he said, “and it is still too hot to approach. Consider what it must have been when it struck.”

He had scarcely finished when a young fellow in a brown jacket made his way down the farther side of the pit. He had been showing off to two companions on the bank, and I suppose he wished to bring them something from the water, a fragment or a piece of the black coating. The ground there was treacherous. He tested it with one foot, stepped upon a strip of gravel above the pool, and leaned towards the exposed end of the object.

“Keep back,” Ogilvy called. “It is hot.”

The fellow looked over his shoulder and grinned. He put out his hand, touched the dark surface, and snatched it away with a cry that brought every face towards him. He stumbled up the slope, holding his right hand beneath his left arm. When he reached the bank he showed his fingers to his companions. The skin across the tips had whitened and begun to blister.

There was a confused movement towards him. One woman offered a handkerchief soaked from her bottle of water. A man who said he had worked at the railway warned her against rubbing the burn and sent the fellow to hold his hand under water at a pump in the adjoining field. The injured man went away with his two companions, angry now that people were staring at him. His cry had been brief, but it stayed with me longer than the sight of the burn. Until then the danger in the pit had belonged to a distance of millions of miles. He had made it as near as a hand’s breadth.

Ogilvy watched him go. “That should save us the trouble of putting up a notice,” he said, though he seemed shaken by it.

My wife wanted to know whether the young man would lose the use of his fingers. I said I thought not, but I could see no more of the injury than she had seen. We climbed to the higher ground, away from the press of people. From there the object looked less imposing. Its dark upper part scarcely broke the level of the pit, and the steam was so thin in the sunlight that it often vanished altogether. If one had passed the place without knowing what lay below, one might have mistaken the crowd for a party watching men at work.

By midmorning the account had spread through the neighbourhood. A cart stopped on the road and its driver left his horse to come across the field. Two boys arrived on bicycles and laid them in the grass. People from Chertsey said they had heard the fall as a gun fired in the distance. Others had slept through it and were unwilling to believe it had made any sound. One elderly man maintained that it was a piece of a wrecked flying machine, although he could not say where such a machine might have come from. Ogilvy repeated his explanation to whoever asked him. Each time he spoke with greater certainty, and each time I noticed how carefully he avoided going close to the water.

I remained near him for a while, helping to keep the children from the broken bank. There was no fence about the pit. The gravel fell away under their feet, and several parents took their children home after seeing the burned man. More came in their place. A rumour arose that the police would arrive with ropes and drain the pool before evening. Another said that a party of scientific men was already on its way from London. I heard both stories repeated as facts within a quarter of an hour.

Once, when the steam lifted, I made out a dark, nearly straight line along the highest part of the object. Ogilvy saw it too. He said it was a fracture, and pointed to a second line lower down which he thought ran at the same angle. I could not see the second line, though I looked until the reflected light from the water hurt my eyes. I have often since tried to recall precisely what was visible that morning, and how much I supplied from expectation. At the time I was certain only of the thing’s great size, its heat, and the marks that made its surface unlike a common stone.

My wife had sat down upon the grass above the pit. She had been quiet since the young man burned his hand. When I joined her she asked whether I believed Ogilvy.

“I do not know,” I said. “He may be right.”

She looked towards the pool. “You spoke of those lights on Mars all last week.”

“I know.”

“If it is only a meteorite, why do you mean to stay?”

I had no answer that satisfied either of us. I wanted to see it when the steam cleared, and I wanted Ogilvy to have another look at the line he called a fracture. These were small reasons, but they were the reasons I gave her. She said she was tired of the crowd and the heat. We had been standing in the sun for hours, and more people were crossing the fields from the Chertsey road.

It was close upon noon. I persuaded her to go home by the path we had taken in the morning, promising to follow presently. She rose, brushed the grass from her dress, and went with me as far as the gate at the edge of the field. I watched her pass through it and turn towards the trees. When she had gone from sight, I walked back to the pit. The crowd had grown again, and I found a place on the bank from which I could still see the steam rising over the water.

The medical book did little to reassure me. I put it back upon the shelf, though I had not finished the passage, and went out into the fresh morning air. My bicycle stood where I had left it the previous evening. The tyres were soft, but I could not bring myself to waste time upon them. I rode to the village at a pace that left me breathless when I reached the little house where Poirot lodged.

He opened the door himself. He was fully dressed, and his breakfast tray stood untouched upon a table behind him.

“I was coming to you,” he said.

“Then you have heard?”

“Yes. Baily told me. He stopped here on his way back from Dr. Wilkins. He said that Madame Inglethorp was dead.”

I followed him into the room. Its order struck me afresh. Even the newspaper lay square with the edge of the table. Poirot took up his hat and carefully brushed a speck from the brim.

“You must come at once,” I urged. “The doctors insist on a post-mortem. Bauerstein suspects poison.”

Poirot’s hand paused.

“And you, my friend?”

“I have looked it up. The symptoms were those of strychnine. There can be no doubt.”

“There can always be doubt,” said Poirot. “You have told me what you read. Now tell me what you saw.”

I gave him an account of the night as we walked to the gate. He interrupted me only once, when I described Lawrence standing with the candle in his hand.

“He was looking towards the fireplace?”

“Towards that wall. I could see nothing there.”

“Good. Go on.”

We set off along the village street, I wheeling my bicycle. Poirot walked at a steady pace, his head bent and his hands clasped behind his back. At the turn into the lane we met Alfred Inglethorp.

He came towards us slowly. His black beard was damp, and his hat had suffered from the rain which, it appeared, had fallen during the night. He raised it when he recognised me.

“Mr. Hastings! Has anything happened at the house?”

I stopped. There was no gentle way to tell him. His face, as I spoke, assumed an expression of such complete stupefaction that for a moment I was ashamed of the suspicions I had entertained.

“Dead?” he repeated. “Emily dead? But she was well when I left her.”

Poirot stood a little aside. Alfred looked from one of us to the other.

“I ought to have been there. Why did they not send for me?”

“No one knew where you were,” I said.

He passed a hand across his forehead.

“I walked down with Dr. Bauerstein, as you know. Afterwards I went to the Red Lion to see a man on business. He kept me there later than I intended. I thought of returning, but the rain had begun. I had no desire to wake Emily merely to tell her that I was home. I took a room at the inn and slept badly. At first light I went out for a walk. I only left the village a few minutes ago.”

“What time did you go to the inn?” I asked.

“I cannot say precisely. As I passed the stables at Styles I heard the clock strike eleven. I must have reached the inn shortly afterwards.”

He seemed to wish to say more, but checked himself. Together we went up the drive. He quickened his pace at the sight of the house, and was ahead of us when John appeared upon the steps.

I did not hear all that passed between them. John laid a hand upon his stepfather’s arm and took him indoors. Poirot remained beside me for a moment, looking at the upper windows.

“You have told Mr. Cavendish that I am coming?”

“He has given me a free hand.”

“Then we will begin with him.”

John received us in the morning-room. The strain of the past hours showed in his face, but he spoke with his usual courtesy. He had put the two keys on a small table at his side.

“My stepfather has just told me where he was,” he said. “I wish we had known. We could have sent for him.”

Poirot expressed his sympathy simply. He asked leave to see Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom, and John took up the keys.

“Wilkins and Bauerstein thought the rooms should remain locked,” he said. “I have opened neither of them.”

As we went into the hall, Dorcas came from the dining-room carrying a tray. John stopped her and told her that Mr. Inglethorp had returned. She set the tray down, visibly relieved.

“He was at the Red Lion,” said John. “He tells us he passed the stables at eleven, on his way there.”

Dorcas looked puzzled.

“At eleven, sir?”

“That is what he said.”

“I was there yesterday afternoon when Baily tried to wind the stable clock, sir. The weight had come loose, and it had stopped. He said he could not mend it until he had fetched a new cord.”

John frowned.

“Perhaps Mr. Inglethorp mistook another clock for it.”

“Perhaps he did, sir.” Dorcas picked up her tray and went on.

Poirot said nothing. I could not tell whether he attached any importance to what we had heard. The lane ran close to the stables, and Alfred might well have made a mistake about the sound. Yet he had offered the clock as the one point by which to fix his movements.

Mary was standing at the foot of the stairs. She looked tired, though she greeted Poirot calmly.

“I am glad you have come,” she said. “John, Cynthia is awake at last. She is in the little sitting-room.”

“Ah,” said Poirot. “With your permission, madame, I should like to see her before we go upstairs.”

Cynthia was seated by an open window. The colour had left her face, and she held a cup of tea in both hands without drinking it. She gave me a wan little smile.

“I can scarcely believe it, Hastings. I was asleep through everything.”

Poirot approached her with a gentleness I should not have expected from his brisk manner in the lane.

“Did you wake at any time in the night, mademoiselle?”

“No,” she answered. “I remember nothing until Mary shook me this morning.”

Poirot bowed. We did not keep her longer.

On the stairs John spoke of the arrangements the doctors had made. He was determined that nobody should enter the rooms without him, and Poirot approved of this. At the door of Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom John selected a key, then stood for a moment with it in his hand. I could see what an effort it cost him to turn it.

The room had been left much as we had seen it at dawn. The bed had been straightened, but the little table still lay on its side near the head of it. On the carpet beside it were a book, a box of matches and a broken vase. The curtains had been drawn back. Sunlight fell across the foot of the bed and gave the room an ordinary appearance which I found almost painful.

Poirot remained just inside the doorway. His eyes passed slowly over the room. Then he went to the window and looked out, first to the lawn below and then to the narrow strip of wall between this window and the next.

“The doors were locked when you came?” he said.

“Both of them,” John replied. “We broke the one through my stepfather’s room. Hastings afterwards unbolted the door from the corridor.”

“And the door to Miss Murdoch’s room?”

“Bolted. I tried it before we forced our way in.”

Poirot went to it and examined the bolt without touching it. He gave the connecting door the same attention. Its frame bore the marks of our shoulders, and a splinter of wood still projected from the place where it had yielded.

He moved about the room in short, deliberate steps. At one point he stooped to look at the carpet beneath the overturned table. At another he stood before the mantelpiece with his hands at his sides. I watched him closely, expecting the quick recognition of some decisive clue. If he recognised one, he gave no sign.

“There was a cup of coffee,” I said. “Mrs. Inglethorp took it upstairs with her last night.”

“Did you see it here this morning?”

“I cannot remember. There was the table, and then we were all trying to help her.”

Poirot nodded, as though this failure of memory were only to be expected. He looked at the hearth. A few ashes lay behind the bars, just as they had when Lawrence stared so strangely in that direction. I went over and stood where Lawrence had stood.

“What made you look here?” asked John.

“Lawrence was gazing at this wall when we entered. I thought something had startled him.”

“There is nothing here,” John said.

He was right, so far as I could see. There were the fireplace, the mantelpiece and the ornaments upon it. Poirot was examining the grate, but after a minute he turned away and walked to the dressing-table.

John moved to the window. I saw him look down at the drive, where a figure crossed towards the front door. He drew back at once.

“My stepfather,” he said. “I had better go to him. He has asked to see me, and there are matters I must attend to. Will you be long?”

“I cannot tell you yet,” Poirot replied. “May I keep the key until I have finished?”

John gave it to him. He left us, closing the door quietly behind him.

For some time Poirot worked without speaking. He opened no drawers. He measured distances with his eye, moved a chair a few inches and replaced it, and knelt beside the fallen table to study a mark on one of its legs. He seemed to care more for the position of things than for the things themselves.

I found the silence oppressive.

“Well,” I said at last, “what do you make of it?”

“I have not finished.”

“I suppose the doctors moved the body. Apart from that, everything seems to have been left as it was.”

“Does it?”

He looked up at me, and I felt that I had spoken hastily.

I went to the doorway and tried to recall the first sight of the room by candlelight. Mrs. Inglethorp had been on the bed. The table had fallen towards the fireplace. Lawrence stood near me, his candle shaking. Mary and Cynthia had appeared in the corridor doorway only after I opened it. The gas had been lit. In that confusion, how much could any of us have observed with certainty?

Poirot rose and brushed his knees.

“Your friend Dr. Bauerstein arrived before Dr. Wilkins?”

“Yes. He happened to be passing the lodge gates when Baily drove out. He ran up to the house.”

“And Madame Inglethorp spoke when he entered?”

“She cried out Alfred’s name. You know that, I suppose?”

“Baily did not tell me.”

I described the cry and the way her eyes had been fixed upon Bauerstein. Poirot listened, then asked me to repeat her earlier words. I did so as nearly as I could. He heard me without comment.

“You said she blamed herself for locking the door,” he observed.

“She called it stupid.”

“Quite so.”

He turned once more to the overturned table. The broken vase had spilled water onto the carpet; it had dried now, leaving a darker patch. Poirot traced the edge of the stain with his gaze. Then, with a sudden movement, he bent down and picked up something close to the skirting-board.

It was so small that I could not see it between his finger and thumb. He carried it to the window, laid it upon his palm and held it out to me. It was a tiny piece of blue sealing-wax, flattened on one side. A few fibres of carpet clung to it.

“Where was that?” I asked.

“Near the wall.”

“From Mrs. Inglethorp’s despatch-case, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

He took a clean envelope from his pocket and slipped the fragment into it. On the flap he wrote a few words in his neat hand, taking care that I should not see them.

“What does it mean?” I demanded.

“I cannot explain it to you now, mon ami.”

“You have an idea, though.”

“I have an observation.” He put the envelope in his pocket. “It may become an idea.”

I was nettled by this distinction. The little scrap might have fallen from any parcel in the house, and I said so. Poirot agreed so readily that I grew more nettled still.

At half-past nine, by the clock on the mantelpiece, he locked the room and led me downstairs. John was occupied with Dr. Wilkins in the morning-room, so Poirot left the key with Mary and told her that he wished to return before luncheon. She promised to give it back to John as soon as the doctor had gone.

We went out to the garden. The rain had left the paths damp, though the sun was already drawing a faint steam from the gravel. Poirot walked to the angle of the house beneath Mrs. Inglethorp’s windows. From below, the right wing looked more isolated than it had from the passage. I pointed out the windows of Alfred’s room and Cynthia’s, with Mrs. Inglethorp’s between them. He counted the panes and looked at the ground beneath each sill.

Baily was working near the stables. On seeing us, he came over, cap in hand. Poirot thanked him for bringing the news that morning. The man said that he had hoped we would soon be told, and added, with a glance at the house, that he had never known such a morning at Styles.

I asked him about the stable clock. He confirmed Dorcas’s account. Its cord had broken the previous afternoon, and the hands still pointed to twenty minutes past four. Poirot merely thanked him again. We walked on until the house hid the stables from view.

“You see,” I said, “Mr. Inglethorp was mistaken.”

“Yes,” said Poirot. “He was.”

His tone gave me no help. He bent to examine the gravel path, then straightened and brushed the earth from his cuff. We returned by the side door. The servants had begun their work again, and the ordinary sounds of the house came faintly from below stairs. That, more than its silence at dawn, made Mrs. Inglethorp’s death seem real to me.

John had finished with Dr. Wilkins. He gave Poirot the key without asking what progress he had made. I think he was grateful to be spared an answer. Poirot and I went upstairs once more.

It was nearly eleven when we entered the bedroom. Poirot locked the corridor door behind us and remained there, looking at the strip of sunlight which now lay across the carpet. He took the envelope from his pocket and tipped the small piece of blue wax into his palm.

I waited while he studied it. Then he placed it upon the dressing-table between us, with the flattened side upwards.

“Look at that side,” he said.

I obeyed. There was a shallow mark upon it, too faint for me to make out. Poirot leaned forward until his face was close to mine.

“You see, Hastings,” he said, “someone took the trouble to press it down after it was broken.”

Lady Russell came to Kellynch early enough to find Sir Walter at breakfast, but not early enough to prevent his having decided that the morning would be disagreeable. The sight of a paper in her hand confirmed him in it. He had invited her advice, and was prepared to hear it with all the patience due to a friend, provided that it did not oblige him to change any thing.

Elizabeth was at the table. Anne, who had been desired to remain, sat near the window with some work which she had twice taken up and twice laid down. Mr Shepherd was expected before noon; and Sir Walter had already observed that it was a great misfortune to have two people of judgement coming on the same errand, since each would suppose the other capable of discovering an expedient.

Lady Russell did not begin by consulting her paper. She spoke of Lady Elliot, of the order which had once prevailed at Kellynch, and of the pleasure she herself had always taken in seeing the family there. Sir Walter listened with approval. It was only when she came to say that the comfort of remaining at Kellynch must depend on a considerable change in its expenses, that he moved the Baronetage a little nearer to him.

“My dear Lady Russell, we are entirely agreed as to the object. It is the means which require consideration.”

“The means have had my consideration,” said she; and she laid the paper before him.

She had gone carefully through such particulars as Mr Shepherd had allowed her to see. The annual visit to London was to be given up for a time; the number of servants reduced; the carriage kept less constantly in use, and one pair of horses sold. There were other savings, smaller in amount, which together might make a respectable sum. She had set down no necessary expense for Anne, and very few for herself; but she had made an allowance for what she believed Sir Walter and Elizabeth would feel most severely.

It was a plan formed with more regard to their feelings than to their accounts. Sir Walter perceived only the accounts.

“No London?” said he. “You cannot mean that Elizabeth should give up London.”

“For a year or two.”

“A year or two! At her age, a year or two is a very serious portion of time.”

Elizabeth looked displeased, though she could not decide whether her father had been defending her advantage or regretting her age.

“And one pair of horses!” he continued. “What is a carriage to do with one pair? I have never seen a family of our consequence make an exhibition of economy with its horses.”

“It need make no exhibition,” said Lady Russell. “The carriage would be used less often.”

“Then it would be kept to stand in the coach-house. A worse economy I cannot conceive.”

He read far enough to discover that a gardener and a footman were also to go. The gardener’s wages seemed to him a trifling sum, but his departure would be noticed by every person who passed the grounds. The footman had, in his opinion, an appearance particularly suited to the hall. He pushed the paper back.

“No, Lady Russell. I know the kindness with which you have done this, but it is impossible. We must find some other way. The family at Kellynch cannot live as if it had lost its consequence.”

Lady Russell had known that he might object to one item, and had prepared herself to discuss any of them. She had not expected the whole to be disposed of in a moment. She tried to explain that the changes, once made, would be little observed; but Sir Walter was of a contrary opinion, and thought the probability of their being observed the only part of the scheme which required no proof.

Mr Shepherd arrived while the paper still lay between them. He was received with the civil gravity which Sir Walter bestowed on a man whose visits had ceased to bring him agreeable news. After a few inquiries, Mr Shepherd produced his own statement, and asked permission to lay it before Sir Walter.

“I have been looking, Sir Walter, at the sums which must be met first. There are payments which will admit of arrangement, and others which cannot prudently be delayed. I would propose disposing of the timber marked last autumn, applying what it brings to the most pressing claims, and granting a lease of the east farm on terms which would secure several years’ rent in advance. With strict limits on household expenditure, it may give us time.”

Sir Walter heard the words “several years’ rent” with attention. The rest pleased him less.

“The timber was marked for inspection,” said he, “not for sale. I do not choose to have Kellynch thinned. As for the east farm, I have no objection to a proper lease at a proper time; but to take rent in advance has an appearance which I cannot approve.”

“The advantage, Sir Walter, would be immediate.”

“That is precisely the difficulty. Everybody would know why we had done it.”

Mr Shepherd believed that very few people would know any thing about the payment; but Sir Walter could always imagine a neighbourhood more watchful of his affairs than it had ever shewn itself to be. Mr Shepherd went through the figures, making clear what each measure might raise and what would remain owing. Sir Walter would not hear of either measure. The trees had grown under his eye, and the rent was the income of a future year. To use it now would, he said, be to leave that year with nothing.

Mr Shepherd folded his statement. Lady Russell looked at Anne, who had listened without appearing to do so. She had learned more of the debts in that hour than her father had meant her to learn, and knew that neither plan promised enough. Her mother had kept accounts which had made economy an ordinary part of the house; Anne could remember the books, and the calm manner in which Lady Elliot had decided that an expense could not be afforded. The remembrance made it easier to speak.

“If we are to stay at Kellynch,” said she, “we must spend so much less that the debts can be paid out of our income. Lady Russell has spared us many things. I think we must give them up too.”

Sir Walter turned to her with surprise. Anne seldom interrupted a consultation in which her opinion had not been asked.

“What things, Anne?”

“We should give up London altogether while any debts remain. We should sell the carriage and horses, and keep no more servants than the house needs for daily use. We might close the rooms we do not live in, and receive no company beyond what we can entertain plainly. Every expense should be written down before it is incurred. If it cannot be paid for, we should do without it.”

Lady Russell was struck by the firmness with which Anne said all this. She could have wished the manner of it less direct for Sir Walter’s sake, but there was nothing in the plan that she could call unreasonable. Mr Shepherd bent over his papers to conceal an approving smile.

Sir Walter had no such difficulty in shewing what he thought.

“Sell the carriage! My dear Anne, you speak as if we were to become prisoners in our own house. Close rooms at Kellynch! What account could we give of that to a visitor?”

“We should need to give very little account,” said Anne, “if we invited fewer visitors.”

Elizabeth, who had at first been as much offended as her father, had begun to consider the proposal in another light. She had seen Lady Russell’s list as a set of public diminutions, every one of which a neighbour might remark upon; but Anne had named an entire rule for living at home. It was harsh, and she disliked the thought of losing London. Still, the hall would remain theirs. She would continue to direct its household, though a smaller one; and a year without a London visit might be more easily explained than a house in which the tradespeople could no longer be kept waiting.

“I think Anne is right,” she said.

Lady Russell looked up. Mr Shepherd ceased to arrange his papers. Sir Walter stared at his eldest daughter as though she had been replaced at the table by some less familiar relation.

“Elizabeth!”

“I do not like any part of it,” she said, “but the other plans will not answer, if Mr Shepherd’s figures are correct. We cannot sell a few trees and suppose the debts paid. Anne’s rule would be tiresome, but we might keep it here. I would sooner tell people that I had chosen to stay at Kellynch for the summer than have them ask why our bills are unpaid.”

It cost Elizabeth something to speak before Mr Shepherd of bills, and she coloured with resentment at having been brought to it. Yet her support was complete. She asked what the carriage might bring, how soon the horses could be sold, and whether the closed rooms would save enough in servants’ work to matter. Mr Shepherd answered readily. Lady Russell, though surprised by the quarter from which help had come, saw in Elizabeth’s questions the first useful consequence of the morning.

Sir Walter alone found no improvement in it. His daughter’s readiness to part with the carriage wounded him more than Anne’s proposal, because Elizabeth understood perfectly what the carriage was. He reminded her of their journeys together and of the reception which was always ready for them in London. Elizabeth replied that they could not enjoy such a reception while they were anxious about the expense of reaching it. For a few minutes they disputed each other’s account of what was possible, with an openness seldom practised between them.

Mr Shepherd waited until Sir Walter had turned again to the window.

“There is another course,” he said. “It has the merit of preserving the property without requiring an immediate sale of any part of it. If Kellynch Hall itself were let to a tenant for a term of years, the rent would be considerable. Sir Walter and the ladies could live elsewhere at much less expense until the debts were cleared.”

The word had hardly been spoken before Sir Walter faced him.

“A tenant?”

Mr Shepherd began to explain the care with which a suitable person could be chosen, but Sir Walter raised his hand.

“I will not allow that word to be spoken again in my presence. A tenant in Kellynch Hall! I have listened this morning to more extraordinary proposals than I had believed three reasonable people capable of making. This is the end of them.”

Mr Shepherd apologised for having distressed him. He did not withdraw the calculation, which remained on the folded paper in his hand; but he said no more of the house. Lady Russell saw that further argument would only make Sir Walter less willing to consider what Anne and Elizabeth had proposed. She asked that the figures might be left for another day.

“For any day you please,” said Sir Walter, “provided we have done with the present one.”

The arrival of the letters gave him a reason to leave the subject. They had been delayed at the village, and were brought into the room together. One was for Elizabeth, containing chiefly the plans of an acquaintance for the autumn. The other, directed in Mary’s familiar hand to Anne, had come from Uppercross.

Anne broke the seal. Mary’s complaints filled both sides of the sheet. She had slept badly, had a pain in her side, and was convinced that Charles did not understand how ill she felt. The children had been noisy; Mrs Musgrove, though very good in her way, had called when Mary wished to rest; and nobody had thought of sending Anne to her. If Anne had any regard for her sister, she would come at once, or at least the next day. Mary added, after signing her name, that she did not expect to be believed until she was much worse.

Anne read the letter a second time. Mary’s illnesses were often made greater by being doubted, and were seldom improved by the sympathy she most urgently demanded. But she was plainly unhappy, and Anne knew that a visit could relieve her, even if it could not settle what was the matter.

“Mary wants me at Uppercross,” she said.

“Is she ill?” asked Lady Russell.

“She says she has been unwell since yesterday, and asks me to come.”

Sir Walter, glad of a new topic, inquired whether Mary had consulted anybody. Anne said the letter did not mention it. Elizabeth wished to know how long Anne meant to stay, since there were household lists which they had begun to discuss and which she did not intend to take up alone.

“I could go tomorrow morning,” said Anne, “and remain a few days. I will write out what I think we can save before I leave.”

Elizabeth accepted this. She had not yet forgotten that she had supported Anne, and wished the plans to retain some consequence, though she could not bear to hear the carriage mentioned again while her father was in the room.

Lady Russell offered to send Anne in her carriage. Sir Walter said that there was no need to settle it so early, then remembered that they had spent the morning disputing what a carriage might cost. He made no further objection. Mr Shepherd took his leave soon afterwards, carrying away a statement which he had not been permitted to finish discussing.

The remainder of the day passed with more civility than ease. Sir Walter spoke at dinner of an alteration he had noticed in the grounds and asked whether the gardener had neglected a border. Elizabeth answered that the season was against it. Neither mentioned that they had been considering the gardener’s dismissal. Lady Russell stayed only a short while after dinner, and Anne promised to send her a copy of the proposed expenses when she had made them plain enough to be useful.

By evening, Elizabeth had recovered some of her customary authority. She told Anne which small matters might be attended to before she went to Uppercross, and observed that Mary would certainly expect a longer visit than she needed. Sir Walter retired with his book. Anne went to her own room with Mary’s letter and a few sheets on which she had begun to put down the costs of the house.

She could hear a door close below her and then the ordinary sounds of Kellynch growing quiet. The figures before her were incomplete. Even if Elizabeth kept her resolution, Sir Walter had agreed to nothing, and the claims Mr Shepherd had described would not wait upon their convenience. Anne put the sheets together without finding an answer to them. She laid Mary’s letter beside them, made ready what she would take, and resolved to go to Uppercross in the morning.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

27 May. The dinner was at Quincey’s rooms last night. I went because he had asked me, and because I could not think of an excuse which would bear examination. Arthur came in late, carrying a parcel which he put down in the hall with an air of great secrecy. He looked so happy that for one foolish instant I disliked him. Then he held out his hand, and I was ashamed.

Quincey had ordered enough dinner for six. He said that if we could not eat it, he would breakfast on our friendship for a week. Arthur had brought a little photograph of Miss Westenra, newly taken, and meant it for Quincey, whose rooms, he declared, wanted the sight of a kind face. He gave me one also. I have put it in my desk. I shall have to decide whether to keep it there.

We talked of old journeys, and of people whom none of us has seen for years. When the table was cleared, Quincey filled three glasses and proposed a health to Arthur and Miss Westenra. Arthur tried to thank us, but got no farther than saying that she had promised to marry him. We knew that already. It was pleasant to hear him say it all the same. I drank with the others. Whatever I had imagined this evening would cost me, it cost less.

Letter, Quincey P. Morris to Miss Lucy Westenra.

27 May.

Dear Miss Lucy,

Art came to dine with Jack and me last night, and brought us your picture. He said you had given him leave to show it, so I hope you will give me leave to thank you. It is on my mantelpiece, where a fellow coming in can see at once that somebody has better taste in friends than I deserve.

We drank your health, and Art made the worst speech I ever heard from him. He got up bravely, looked at the three glasses, and could not find a word beyond your name. Jack and I thought it a very good speech, and told him so.

I am writing chiefly to say that you must not lose two friends because you have gained a husband. Jack would call that a badly expressed sentiment. I would say it better if I knew how. You have made Art happier than I have ever seen him, and we are both glad of it.

Yours faithfully,

QUINCEY P. MORRIS.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

30 May.

My dearest Mina,

I had a letter from Mr. Morris this morning which made me cry, though there was nothing sad in it. He and Dr. Seward had Arthur to dinner, and I am so relieved that they can all be together as before. I had feared I had spoiled something precious to the three of them. Arthur says I did not understand their friendship if I thought a disappointment could break it. He is right, perhaps; but one may be anxious even when one ought to know better.

Mamma has begun to speak of dates and visits, and Arthur speaks of houses as if we had only to choose one. Sometimes I want to ask them both to be quiet for an hour, so that I may enjoy being engaged. Do not think me ungrateful. Yesterday Arthur and I walked in the park, and he told me about a horse he had loved as a boy. I shall remember that walk better than any discussion of houses.

Have you heard from Jonathan? You said in your last that his return had been put off, but gave me no new date. I hope he will soon be able to tell you all his adventures himself. Write to me as soon as you can, and come when your school will spare you. We shall take our old walks, and I promise not to talk of Arthur the whole time. I dare say I shall break the promise before we reach the first turning.

Your loving

LUCY.

Miss Mina Murray’s Journal.

6 June. I have bought a new exercise book for my shorthand, since the old one has become so crowded that I can scarcely find a clean page. It is curious how much of a day one can lose through thinking that one will remember it. I meant to set down something Mrs. Coleman said at luncheon, and already I have forgotten her very words, though I remember that they made us all laugh.

There is no news from Jonathan. His few lines of 9 May said that he expected to return in about a week; afterwards came a letter dated 12 June, saying that business detained him and that I must not be alarmed if I did not hear from him for a little while. I cannot make the dates agree with the time at which it reached me. Mr. Hawkins says that letters from those parts may take strange routes, and that Jonathan will have written the date on which he expected the letter to be read. That seems a troublesome way of writing to any one, especially to me. Still, Jonathan knows more of foreign posts than I do.

Mr. Hawkins was very kind. He asked if I should like him to make an inquiry, and I said that we ought to wait for the next post. I was glad to have him offer, and sorry afterwards that I had refused. I shall write to Jonathan this evening. There is no reason why my letter should fail to reach him merely because his have taken so long to reach me.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

10 June. Renfield occupied an hour of my afternoon. For several days he has taken an uncommon interest in the papers, reading them with care and laying aside those which he wishes to see again. To-day, while I was watching him sort a little pile of cuttings, he asked, without any lead from me, “Is Miss Westenra to marry Mr. Holmwood?”

I asked where he had heard of Miss Westenra. He showed me the notice of the engagement, cut neatly from yesterday’s paper. It gave him no satisfaction to learn that the report was true. “Then the gentlemen will dine together more often,” he said, and returned to his sorting. He would say no more.

I had not known the notice was out. It annoyed me that a patient should be the one to tell me of it, and I questioned him longer than there was any need. His answer was plain enough. He reads the society notices as he reads everything else put within his reach. I took the cutting away, then gave it back. I could find no sound reason for depriving him of it.

Letter, Mr. Otto Klein to Miss Mina Murray.

Bistritz, 18 June.

Madam,

I ask pardon for addressing you without an introduction. My name is Otto Klein, and I keep a forwarding office in this town. A man employed in the carriage trade brought me a packet yesterday with instructions that it should go by the first post to England. It bore your name and address. As the address had been written indistinctly, I asked him to wait whilst I made certain of it. He could tell me nothing beyond what he had been paid to do.

I enclose the packet as I received it. With it came a request, written on a separate slip, that I should inform you that Mr. Jonathan Harker has been delayed in the course of his business and cannot yet name the day of his return. The slip bore the initials “J. H.” I have not met Mr. Harker, and cannot speak for its writer. I give you these particulars so that you may judge the message for yourself.

If you wish to send an answer by way of my office, I shall take care to forward it according to the directions supplied to me. I hope that Mr. Harker will soon write to you in his own hand and make my letter unnecessary.

I remain, Madam,

Your obedient servant,

OTTO KLEIN.

Miss Mina Murray’s Journal.

23 June. Mr. Klein’s letter came this morning, with a small packet containing nothing but Jonathan’s letter dated 19 June. In it he says he is still occupied, and hopes to start home before the month ends. It is so like his first account of the delay that I read it twice to be sure I had not taken out the earlier letter by mistake. I should have been happier with one little fact about what he has done, or even what he has had for breakfast. I have written to Mr. Klein to thank him and to ask where the packet was given to the carriage man. I have also asked him to forward a letter to Jonathan.

I took both letters to Mr. Hawkins. He compared the writing, holding them close to the window. He said the hand was Jonathan’s, though he thought it hurried. When I showed him Mr. Klein’s statement that he had never met Jonathan, he grew grave and said he would write to a correspondent of his own. He would give me no answer about when it might come.

I wish now that I had asked him to make the inquiry on the first day. Yet I cannot see what we should have known sooner. The letters tell us Jonathan is delayed; Mr. Klein can tell us only that somebody delivered them. I keep coming back to the ordinary words in Jonathan’s letter, trying to find the sentence which will set my mind at rest. There is none. I have put it away and shall try to do my work.

Letter, Arthur Holmwood to Quincey P. Morris.

24 June.

My dear Quincey,

You will remember the little picture I brought you. Lucy says she is honoured to be placed where you can see her every morning, but that you must turn her to the wall whenever you invite ladies to call. I undertook to deliver this warning exactly, and have done so.

My father asks me to go down to him for several days next week. I shall come back by way of town, if you and Jack will dine with me. Lucy says you must both accept, as she wishes to be sure that I have learnt something from the way you entertained me. That leaves me little choice in the matter, though I think the three of us can pass an evening pleasantly even under orders.

I called on Jack yesterday and found him at work. He would scarcely let me sit down, and I took the hint after ten minutes. Tell him I mean to try again when he has more time.

Yours ever,

ART.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

25 June. Arthur called yesterday. I was writing up a case and sent him away too soon. He came in only to ask how I did, and stood by the door while I finished a sentence which might have waited. I know why I behaved so. The knowledge gives me no excuse.

Renfield asked for a fresh newspaper to-day and was content when I gave him one. I had expected another question about Miss Westenra and had prepared several answers, none of which I should have cared to give. He spoke instead about the price of a pair of boots advertised on the last page. He said the maker ought to be ashamed to ask so much for leather. On this subject I could speak to him without difficulty.

I have written to Arthur accepting his dinner invitation. It took me longer than the writing of the case.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

29 June.

My dearest Mina,

I have your letter, and have been thinking of it ever since it came. I know you asked me not to be anxious on your account. You also told me that Jonathan’s letters gave you no comfort, and I cannot pretend not to have read that. I wish I could sit beside you whilst we waited for Mr. Hawkins’s answer. Since I cannot, I shall write often, even when I have very little to say.

Mamma wants you to visit as soon as your work is done. There is room for you here, and no one will oblige you to be cheerful. I should like you beside me for my own sake too. I have made such a muddle of choosing a dress that I need the opinion of a person who will tell me the truth. Arthur says all the dresses are pretty. If I show him two which are plainly different, he says it twice.

Mr. Morris called yesterday with a book he thought I should enjoy. He stayed for tea and spoke of Arthur for so long that mamma asked whether he meant to leave me any part in the conversation. He replied that Arthur had told him I was coming to stay here before I had told Arthur, and that he was collecting all the news he could. That made us laugh. I tell you these small things because I should want them from you if I were waiting. You may send me the smallest things in return, or send nothing until you feel able.

Ever your loving

LUCY.

Miss Mina Murray’s Journal.

1 July. I have finished my work at the school for the term. The children presented me with a little case for my pencils, and I very nearly cried before them. I shall go to Lucy in two days, if there is no word in the meantime requiring me to travel elsewhere.

Mr. Hawkins has received an answer from his correspondent, who knows nothing of Jonathan’s movements after he left Bistritz. Mr. Klein has answered me also. He has made inquiries of the carriage man, but the man had taken the packet from another driver and does not know who first entrusted it to him. I am sorry Mr. Klein took so much trouble on my behalf, and more sorry that it has brought us no nearer to Jonathan.

A third letter arrived this afternoon. It is dated 29 June and says that Jonathan starts for home at once. I carried it to Mr. Hawkins without even taking off my hat. He read it and said we must now have patience for the time a journey takes. I know he wished to comfort me. If Jonathan starts at once, he will soon be here; yet I stood outside Mr. Hawkins’s door wondering where Jonathan had been when he wrote those words. I had expected to be glad of them. Perhaps I shall be glad to-morrow.

Telegram, Dr. Emil Hartmann, Klausenburgh Hospital, to Miss Mina Murray.

3 July.

Jonathan Harker is alive in our hospital. He says the letters you received after May were written under compulsion.

On leaving Miss Clarkson's office, Eve found that the rain had stopped. London, having spent the morning emptying a considerable quantity of water over itself, was now looking rather pleased with the result. A watery sun shone on Shaftesbury Avenue. The pavement still held enough pools to make walking an exercise in judgment, but an umbrella had become a burden.

Eve regarded the one in her hand. It was an admirable umbrella, with a polished handle and a silk covering of a quality she had no difficulty in recognising, though she had never owned anything like it. Its return presented a problem. She did not know the name of the young man who had lent it to her. Indeed, "lent" might be too definite a word for an arrangement in which one party had made off without waiting for the other to speak. Still, the building opposite the coal merchants was easy to find, and a club porter could be trusted with an umbrella.

Twenty minutes later she stood in the entrance of the Drones Club.

"Would you be so kind as to take this?" she said to the porter. "A gentleman came out of the club this morning and gave it to me when it was raining. I should like him to have it back."

"Certainly, miss. What name, miss?"

"I don't know his name. He was tall, and he wore a monocle."

The porter, who had been employed at the Drones long enough to regard descriptions of its members with caution, considered this one.

"I think I know the gentleman, miss."

"Will you give him this as well?"

She took a sheet of paper from her bag and wrote on it, against the wall, while the porter held the umbrella. Her note ran:

Thank you for coming to my rescue. The umbrella saved a hat which had no business being out in the rain. I hope you have not missed it.

She folded the paper.

"There is no name on it," she said. "If he has lent several umbrellas this morning, he may have trouble deciding who wrote it."

The porter smiled with the restraint proper to his position. Eve went away, and he carried the umbrella into the cloak-room.

* * * * *

At half-past twelve Psmith came down the stairs of the Drones and found the Honourable Mr. Walderwick examining the umbrella-stand. Mr. Walderwick was a small young man whose usual expression suggested that something had gone wrong with the arrangements for lunch. At present the suggestion was well founded.

"I say," he said to Psmith, "have you seen my umbrella?"

"It depends," said Psmith, "on which of the many umbrellas in London you have in mind."

"Mine has a silver band on the handle. I left it here when I came in, and now it isn't here."

"An unpleasant discovery."

"The porter says a girl brought it back."

Psmith looked at him with interest. "Then your worst fears seem to have been removed."

"Back?" said Mr. Walderwick. "What I want to know is how she got it in the first place. The porter says you gave it to her."

"It is unwise to accept every statement made by a porter without inquiry. Nevertheless, in this case I believe he is correct."

"You took my umbrella?"

"Only for a short time."

"What for?"

Psmith considered the question. There were circumstances in which a full account of the morning's events might have pleased Mr. Walderwick. This did not appear to be one of them. Mr. Walderwick was already taking the loss of temporary custody hard.

"Walderwick," he said, "what would you take for that umbrella?"

"I don't want to sell it. I want to know what you were doing with it."

"Twenty pounds?"

Mr. Walderwick stared.

"It cost thirty-five shillings."

"Then you have an opportunity to show a profit."

"But why on earth do you want to buy it?"

Psmith's manner remained grave.

"I find myself attached to it."

"For twenty pounds?"

"If you feel that I have named a figure which does it less than justice, let us say twenty-five."

Mr. Walderwick ceased to pursue the history of his property. Five minutes later the porter, having fetched the umbrella, watched Psmith write a cheque. Mr. Walderwick studied the figures twice before putting it in his pocket.

"Well," he said, "it's your umbrella now."

"So I had gathered."

"But it still doesn't explain why you took it."

Psmith accepted the umbrella from the porter.

"No," he said. "It does not."

He went upstairs. In the smoking-room he opened the umbrella, inspected the silk, and closed it again. At the window the coal merchants were doing business with the same modesty as before. The patch of pavement beneath their awning was empty.

A waiter brought him the folded note a little later. Psmith read it once, then a second time. He put it carefully into his pocket.

* * * * *

Eve's appointment with Lord Emsworth was for half-past two. She arrived at his London hotel with seven minutes to spare and spent five of them considering whether she ought to have prepared a speech about catalogues. She knew enough about books to do the work, and she had even made catalogues for people before, though none of the collections had belonged to an earl. It was the thought of the earl that troubled her. A private library might contain almost anything, and she had no wish to look surprised by any of it.

A waiter took her to a sitting-room where Lord Emsworth was waiting. He was a tall, thin old gentleman with a mild face and an air of having come into the room in search of something which was no longer there. On the table beside him lay a heap of papers, a pair of gloves, and a small potted plant.

"Miss Halliday?" he said. "How do you do? Pray sit down."

Eve sat down. Lord Emsworth sat down. He looked at the papers.

"My sister," he said, "has asked me to speak to you about the library."

"Yes, Lord Emsworth."

"Quite a large library. Very large indeed, I believe."

He seemed to expect Eve to confirm this. She waited politely.

"Have you ever done this kind of thing before?" he asked.

"Yes. I made a catalogue of the late Sir Matthew Phipps's books last winter. He had nearly four thousand volumes."

"Four thousand," said Lord Emsworth. "Dear me."

"He had kept no record of where they were, so I made a list by author and another by subject. It meant we could find a book without searching every room."

"That sounds useful."

He turned over the papers on the table. Eve could see that one was a letter addressed in Lady Constance Keeble's firm handwriting. Lord Emsworth picked up another sheet and studied it with the aid of his pince-nez.

"Constance wrote down some questions," he said. "I put them here somewhere."

He raised a hotel bill, looked beneath it, and then lifted the little plant. The questions were under the pot.

"Ah. She asks whether you can identify an early edition."

"I can usually tell when a book needs closer examination. I would check the title page and the publication details before entering it."

"Yes. Quite. And whether you can distinguish books which have been rebound."

Eve answered that question too. Lord Emsworth listened, or appeared to listen, while gently turning the pot on the table. He asked about her references and was satisfied when she told him she had brought them. Then he came to the last of his sister's questions.

"How would you deal with volumes whose titles are missing?"

"I would look at the first pages and the contents, if there were any. For older books I might need to consult a bibliography."

Lord Emsworth nodded. His eyes had strayed to the plant.

"Constance will be glad to hear that," he said. "You see this little fellow?"

Eve leaned forward. She had noticed it on entering. Its slender stem carried two leaves and a small pink flower, a brave effort for a plant so recently removed from a garden.

"Very pretty," she said.

Lord Emsworth brightened. He explained where it had come from, how the plant had been propagated, and why the bloom interested him. Eve gathered that it was to travel back to Blandings under his personal care. She listened with the patience she would have given to a collector explaining a rare book.

At length Lord Emsworth recalled his sister's letter. He reached across the table for Eve's references. At the same moment Eve rose to pass them to him. Her bag caught the edge of the little pot.

It fell onto the carpet.

For a moment neither moved. Then Eve knelt and lifted it. The earth had come loose, and the flower, which had been upright a few seconds earlier, hung from a bent stem.

"Oh, I am sorry."

Lord Emsworth looked down at it with such distress that she felt worse than she would have felt if she had upset the whole table. She found a sheet of hotel paper, gathered the earth into it, and set the pot upright. The stem had not broken through. Eve took a pin from her hat and secured it to the thin stick which stood in the soil.

"There," she said. "It may recover."

Lord Emsworth bent over the pot. Eve could see nothing to encourage him, but he touched one of the leaves and said that she had done the right thing.

"I am dreadfully sorry," Eve said again. "I ought to have watched my bag."

"It was an accident, my dear. A most unfortunate accident." He looked at the plant once more. "I should have put it farther back."

He did not return to his sister's questions. Eve gave him her references, and he took them without looking at them.

"My sister will want to write to you," he said. "She is arranging all this. I think she said you would come down at the end of the week."

"I can come whenever she wishes."

"Yes. Yes, I think that will do."

He accompanied her to the door with the pot in his hands. As she went out, Eve glanced back. Lord Emsworth had set it on a table in the sunlight and was examining the stem again. He raised a hand in farewell without looking up.

Outside, Eve was uncertain whether she had acquired a position or merely destroyed a flower. Lord Emsworth had not told her she could not come, and she decided to hold fast to that.

* * * * *

At four o'clock she went into a bookshop near Piccadilly to buy a small notebook. She had decided to put down, while she remembered them, the questions Lady Constance had sent to her brother. If a letter arrived offering her the work, she meant to be ready.

There were notebooks on a counter at the back of the shop. Eve was inspecting them when a voice beside her said, "I can recommend the blue one. It is stoutly bound and offers no opinion on what you write in it."

She turned. The tall young man with the monocle was looking down at the notebooks. This time he wore a hat.

"We have met," she said.

"Have we?"

"You lent me an umbrella this morning."

"An umbrella?" said the young man.

Eve glanced at him closely. She could have been mistaken about many things that day, including the outcome of her interview, but she had an excellent memory for faces.

"Outside a coal merchant's in Dover Street," she said. "You put it into my hand and ran away."

"A striking incident. I am sorry to have missed it."

"Then you have a double?"

"I have never been told so."

"Perhaps you lend umbrellas so often that you forget."

"I should be surprised to learn that I possessed enough umbrellas to make a habit of it."

Eve laughed. His face remained solemn, though his eyes suggested that he was enjoying himself.

"I returned it to the club," she said. "And I left a note for you."

"That was kind of you."

"So it was you."

"I was speaking on behalf of the person to whom you left it. Whoever he is, he will be touched."

The shop assistant came forward. Eve bought the blue notebook, partly because she liked it and partly because the young man's account of its character had made the other notebooks difficult to consider. She paid, took her change, and turned towards the door.

"I am glad your hat survived the rain," he said.

She stopped. She had not mentioned the hat to him, except in the note.

"Good afternoon," she said.

"Good afternoon."

She went out smiling in spite of herself. Psmith remained by the counter until she had passed the window. Then he bought a book which he did not want. He had entered the shop to fill ten minutes before an appointment, and it seemed necessary to leave with something. The assistant wrapped the book while Psmith looked through the glass at the street. Eve had gone.

* * * * *

In the evening Mike Jackson called at the Drones. He had come to learn how Psmith's departure from the fish business had gone, and found him in the smoking-room with his purchase from the bookshop beside him.

"Did you tell your uncle?" Mike asked.

"I told him last night. The discussion occupied some time, but we eventually reached a point at which I was able to leave the room. I have no present duties involving fish."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Miss Clarkson's agency opens its doors to me tomorrow."

Mike hoped the visit would produce a job. He spoke of Phyllis, who was trying to make the household accounts cover a month that had already outgrown them, and of the farm which still seemed just within reach whenever they discussed it at home. Psmith listened. He had called on the Jacksons the day before and knew what the farm meant to them.

"By the way," he said, "does Mrs. Jackson know a girl who is going to catalogue a library in the country?"

"Yes. Eve Halliday. She was at school with Phyllis. She's going to Blandings, if the interview went well."

Psmith took the name into his mind without changing his expression.

"Did it?"

"I don't know. Phyllis expects her to call tomorrow."

Mike glanced at the clock and rose. He had promised to be home for dinner, and Psmith went with him as far as the stairs. When he returned to the smoking-room, it was empty.

The evening light had almost gone from the window. Psmith drew a chair near it and sat down. At his side stood the umbrella for which he had paid twenty-five pounds. He picked it up and turned the silver band on its handle between his fingers.

"Eve Halliday," he said.

The First National Bank was three blocks from the Herald office. I walked them thinking about five thousand dollars. It was too much to carry around for lunch money and too little to buy the city. It might have bought Donald Willsson an hour with somebody he wanted to question. It might have been meant to buy his silence. The check stub didn’t say which.

At the bank I asked for the man who handled checks drawn on the Herald accounts. They sent me to a desk behind a brass railing. The man at it had a narrow face, a stiff collar, and a blotter laid square with the edge of his desk.

“I’m Fenton,” he said.

I showed him my Continental card and told him what I wanted.

“You represent the estate?”

“I represent the man who wrote the check. He hired me two days before he was killed.”

“That doesn’t give you authority to examine his account.”

“I haven’t asked to examine it. I want to know whether one check has come through.”

He looked at my card again, though he had already read it.

“Have you the check number?”

“No. I have the stub. It’s the last one in his book. Five thousand dollars, written yesterday afternoon. The stub gives no payee.”

“Then I couldn’t tell you anything even if I were disposed to. There may be several checks for that amount.”

“Look at the numbers he used yesterday. You’ll find the last one easily enough.”

Fenton put my card on his blotter and pressed its corners flat with two fingers.

“Why should I?”

“Because a man was killed last night with that check somewhere about him, or with it in somebody else’s pocket. If it comes in, you’ll want to know which.”

That made him look at me instead of at the card. I gave him the rest of the morning, leaving out the blood on Mrs. Willsson’s slipper. He listened without changing his expression. Then he got up, went through a door, and left me with the brass railing and a calendar.

He came back in a few minutes carrying a sheet of paper. He didn’t let me see it.

“The check has not been presented,” he said.

“Certified?”

“No.”

“Was a request made to certify it?”

“Not here.”

“Could he have cashed it himself yesterday?”

“Not as a check. Our records show no transaction against it.”

“Could he have got five thousand dollars in cash without using it?”

Fenton put the sheet face down.

“That is another question.”

“It is. I’ll ask it another day. You’re sure about the check?”

“I’ve checked the account and the certification records. It has never been presented or certified.”

“When it does come in, will you hold it?”

“We’ll deal with it according to the account instructions.”

He returned my card. I took it and stood up.

“Then you’d better tell whoever deals with it that the man who signed it is dead.”

“He has heard.”

“Tell him the police may want the check.”

Fenton’s mouth made a small straight line.

“The police have ways of asking for things,” he said.

Outside, I stood on the bank steps and watched people go in with money and come out without it. Somewhere a piece of paper worth five thousand dollars was doing nothing at all. I didn’t know whether it was in a drawer, in a pocket, or in the ashes of somebody’s stove.

I went back to the Herald, but the Lewis girl had gone to lunch. I used a telephone in the office to call the dead man’s house. Nobody answered. I let it ring longer than I needed to, then hung up and went to lunch myself.

By the time I reached the Great Western it was late afternoon. The clerk told me a lady was waiting. He made the word lady sound like an item he had entered on the wrong side of a ledger.

She sat in a corner of the lobby, holding a pair of gloves across her knees. She wore a dark coat and a small hat pulled low over her yellow hair. She was paler than she had been the night before. When she saw me she stood up.

“I came to speak to you,” she said.

“I gathered that.”

“Can we go somewhere?”

“My room, if you don’t mind a room in the Great Western.”

She looked at the clerk, who had begun studying a key rack, and went toward the elevator. I followed her.

Upstairs I unlocked my door and let her in first. She stopped just inside it. The room was as I had left it, except that somebody had made the bed and taken away a newspaper. I shut the door.

“You went to my husband’s office,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And to his father.”

“Yes.”

“His father sent you to me?”

“Your husband sent for me. His father sent me away.”

She crossed to the window but didn’t look out. She put her gloves on the sill.

“I don’t know why Donald wanted a detective,” she said.

“Neither do I. I had an appointment with him last night. He was killed before he kept it.”

She turned around.

“You thought I ought to have told you.”

“I thought you knew he was dead when you told me he wouldn’t be home.”

“I did.”

“Who told you?”

She folded her arms, then unfolded them.

“A woman telephoned.”

“What woman?”

“I don’t know. She said Donald had been hurt in Hurricane Street. She gave me the block.”

“Did she say he’d been shot?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Nothing. She hung up.”

“You went there.”

“Yes.”

“And found him.”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

“Yes.”

“Who else was there?”

“No one when I came.”

“You were beside him when people looked out of the houses. They saw a man and a woman.”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“Think of somebody who might have been in the alley, then. He could have crossed while you were watching your husband.”

“I would have seen him.”

“Unless you were looking down.”

She looked down now. I waited while she took her gloves off the sill and put them back.

“Donald was on the pavement,” she said. “I knelt beside him. That is all I know.”

“Were you sure he was dead?”

“I tried to speak to him.”

“Did you touch him?”

She held up her bare hands as if I could find last night on them.

“I touched his face. I put my hand under his head.”

“That could account for the blood on your slipper.”

She put her hands down.

“You noticed it.”

“After you came home.”

“I cleaned it this morning.”

“I supposed you would.”

She sat in the room’s one chair without being asked. Her knees stayed close together and her back was straight.

“Why did you go away without calling anyone?” I asked.

“I heard doors opening. I heard people coming. There was nothing I could do for him.”

“That usually brings a widow toward the people, not away from them.”

“I was frightened.”

“Of the people?”

“Of what they would say.”

“They’ll say more when they learn you ran.”

“Then tell them I was there.” She spoke quickly. “Tell them everything I’ve told you. I came because I want you to know it.”

“You could have told the police.”

“I went to the police this morning.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I had a telephone call and went to Hurricane Street.”

“The man who questioned you ask about anybody else at the body?”

“Yes. I said I saw no one.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I don’t know.”

I leaned against the bureau. She had answered the easy questions and some of the hard ones. There were others.

“What was your husband doing in that block?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he have a friend there?”

“No one I knew.”

“A woman?”

She brought her eyes up to mine again.

“If he had, he didn’t tell me.”

“Had you reason to think he did?”

For a second she looked as if she might laugh. She didn’t.

“I had reason to think he told me very little about anything.”

“Yesterday afternoon he wrote a check for five thousand dollars. Know anything about it?”

“No.”

“He took it out of the office. It hasn’t reached the bank.”

She held the gloves by one end and swung them once against her skirt.

“Why do you tell me that?”

“To see whether it means anything to you.”

“It doesn’t.”

“His father thinks you killed him.”

“That is why I came here instead of waiting for you to call on me.”

“You knew I’d seen his father?”

“He telephoned me after you left.”

“What did he say?”

“He said a detective had come to him with a story about my shoe. He asked where I had been last night. He didn’t let me finish answering.”

“He doesn’t often let anybody finish.”

She gave the gloves a harder slap against her skirt.

“Do you believe I killed Donald?”

“I believe you went to Hurricane Street and came away with blood on your slipper. The rest takes finding out.”

Her face tightened. She got up.

“There is something else you should know. A man came to the house this morning. He asked for Donald. I told him Donald was dead. He knew already.”

“Max Thaler?”

She looked startled, which answered me before she did.

“You saw him.”

“I saw him go in. What did he want?”

“He asked what Donald had told you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I hadn’t met you.”

“And then?”

“He asked whether I had gone to Hurricane Street. I told him I had.”

“How did he take it?”

“He said I ought to have stayed there.”

“That’s good advice. Did he give you any more?”

“No. He left.”

“Did he ask about a check?”

“No.”

I watched her put on her gloves. She worked each finger into place with care.

“Who besides you knew your husband had asked me to the house?” I said.

“I don’t know who he told. I was there when you arrived. The servants knew you were waiting.”

“The woman on the telephone knew you would leave?”

“She called me at home. She didn’t ask who was there.”

“Why did you tell me he wouldn’t be home when you got back?”

“Because it was true.”

“You could have told me the rest.”

“I had just seen my husband dead in the street.”

She went to the door. I opened it for her. She stopped with one hand on the knob.

“I didn’t ask you to keep my visit to yourself,” she said.

“No.”

“I don’t ask it now.”

She went down the hall without looking back. I closed the door and looked at the chair she had used. There was nothing on it. I had half expected her to leave the gloves.

I went downstairs after a while and asked the clerk if anybody had called for me. He said no. I asked him whether he had seen Mrs. Willsson come in. He said he had. That exhausted his interest in the matter.

I took a walk without going far. At a newsstand I bought the Evening Herald. Its front page had no more about the murder than the morning paper had printed. The police were following several lines of inquiry, which could mean they had several lines or none. I folded the paper and went back to the hotel.

An envelope was waiting for me at the desk. It had my room number on it and no stamp. The clerk said a boy had brought it ten minutes before. He couldn’t tell me whose boy, or where the boy had gone after leaving it.

Inside was a single sheet of hotel stationery. The words were written in block letters:

THE LADY WENT TO HURRICANE STREET BEFORE THE SHOTS. ASK HER WHO SENT HER.

There was no signature. At the bottom, in smaller letters, somebody had written:

MAX THALER SAYS YOU WILL KNOW THIS IS FROM HIM.

The clerk watched me read it.

“Anything to answer?” he asked.

“No.”

I carried the note upstairs. It wasn’t proof that Thaler knew when Mrs. Willsson had gone out. It was proof that he wanted me to ask her about it. She had left her house at ten-twenty. Her husband had been shot at ten-forty. She could have reached Hurricane Street before the shots, but the time she gave me had been put into her story without my asking for it. She had said the woman called to tell her he had been shot.

I looked at the note again. If Thaler had sent it, he had a reason to want that part of her story pulled apart. He might have known something. He might have wanted me occupied with her while he did something else. I put the note in my pocket. Neither possibility gave me a place to go.

At the desk downstairs I asked for a telegraph blank. I wrote my report to the Old Man in San Francisco, counted the words once, and left it for transmission. It read:

DONALD WILLSSON MURDERED BEFORE APPOINTMENT WITH ME STOP WIDOW RECEIVED CALL LEFT HOUSE TEN TWENTY RETURNED ELEVEN FIVE WITH BLOOD ON SLIPPER STOP ADMITS FINDING BODY BUT DENIES SEEING MAN REPORTED BESIDE IT STOP LAST CHECK WRITTEN YESTERDAY FIVE THOUSAND PAYEE OMITTED FROM STUB STOP FENTON FIRST NATIONAL SAYS CHECK NEVER PRESENTED OR CERTIFIED STOP THALER SENT MESSAGE CLAIMING WIDOW REACHED SCENE BEFORE SHOTS STOP CONTINUING INQUIRY

I paid for it. The clerk gave the blank to a boy to take to the telegraph office. I waited until the boy came back with the receipt. Then I put the receipt beside Thaler’s note in my pocket and went upstairs.

It was night. I sat alone in my hotel room with the window open and the folded Evening Herald on my knee. Cars went by below. Once somebody laughed in the street. I read Thaler’s message again, put it under the newspaper, and switched off the lamp. Donald Willsson’s five-thousand-dollar check had not reached the bank. I still didn’t know where it had gone.

Mr. Franklin, having given me the benefit of his arms in getting me on my legs, looked towards the place where Rosanna had disappeared.

“Have I frightened the poor girl away?” he asked.

“You have surprised her, sir,” I said. “You have surprised me too. There’s no harm done to either of us that I can see.”

“That’s more than I can say for your coat, Betteredge. I have covered it with sand.”

“It has borne worse treatment at my own hands, Mr. Franklin.”

He brushed at my sleeve with his glove, and made matters worse. I stopped him, and we set off through the sandhills together. He had left his luggage at the station, he told me, with orders to send it on. As for the seven-and-sixpence, that was a debt incurred when he was a little boy, and had wagered against my opinion of a horse which the late Sir John had bought. I remembered the horse, which was an excellent animal. I remembered the wager, which Mr. Franklin had lost. I did not remember lending him the money to pay it; but he declared I had done so, and pressed the seven-and-sixpence on me there and then.

I declined it. A gentleman of five-and-twenty who pays a debt of seven-and-sixpence contracted in his childhood has a claim on his money which I should be the last man to dispute. Mr. Franklin put the coins back in his pocket, and said he would find some other way of settling with me. It was like him to say it with a smile, and like me, I hope, to be pleased at seeing that some of his old ways had survived his education abroad.

We had got into the plantation when he asked whether my lady was at home. I told him she was expected back from her visit in the course of the afternoon, and that Miss Rachel was with her. He looked at his watch.

“I have stolen a march on them,” he said. “You expected me at the close of the day?”

“Four hours hence, sir, by the account we had from you.”

“I meant to keep to it. A letter brought me away by the earlier train.”

He put his hand inside his coat, and then took it out again empty. For a little while he walked on without saying more. I might have supposed that the letter concerned his own affairs, and left it there, if he had not stopped of his own accord at the turn in the path.

“You shall see it,” he said. “There is no reason why you should be left to guess at my coming early.”

He drew a letter from his pocket and gave it to me. The paper had been folded small, and opened more than once. I put on my spectacles. My eyes, good as they are for my age, have never cared to compete with a lawyer’s handwriting in the shade of a fir plantation. We walked out to the light beyond the trees, and I read as follows:

“London, Wednesday, 24th May, 1848.

“My dear Mr. Blake,

“A person called at your lodgings this afternoon, and asked what train you intended to take tomorrow, and at what hour you would reach Lady Verinder’s house. The servant, having no instructions on the point, gave him no information. He left no name.

“I do not pretend to know what interest this person has in your movements. As the questions were put with some persistence, I advise you to take the earlier train, and to go straight to Yorkshire. This change will cost you little, and may save you an inconvenience. Keep the packet which has been entrusted to you in your own charge during the journey. On arriving, place it for the night where it can be locked up. We can settle what follows by letter.

“I remain, my dear Mr. Blake,

“Faithfully yours,

“Bruff.”

I read the letter a second time. The first reading informed me why Mr. Franklin had come early. The second made me wonder who had been so anxious to learn when he would come. Mr. Franklin watched my face, while I folded the paper and returned it.

“You know something,” he said.

“I know that a person has been asking after your train, sir. Mr. Bruff writes it down plainly enough.”

“And you know no more?”

“Not from the letter.”

This answer was strictly true. It did not satisfy him, and I had no wish that it should. Penelope’s tale of the three strangers and the boy came back to me, along with the promise I had made to ask Mr. Franklin about it. I gave him my daughter’s account, as nearly as I could remember her words. He listened without interrupting me. When I came to what the boy had said, Mr. Franklin stood still.

“‘He has got It about him,’” he repeated. “Those were the words?”

“Penelope’s own words to me, sir. I was not there.”

“And the men came to the house today?”

“This morning. I sent them away.”

He took off his hat, though we were in no company, and passed his hand over his forehead. The fine foreign manner, which had kept his spirits up on the sand, left him for the moment.

“What did you make of it, Betteredge?”

“What I generally make of a performance I am invited to see for nothing,” I said. “I looked for the means by which the performers hoped to be paid.”

He smiled at that, but only for an instant. Then he asked me whether Penelope had followed the men far, whether any of them had seen her, and whether they had gone towards the village or the road. I could answer the first two questions from what she had told me. On the third, I was uncertain, and said so.

I mention my uncertainty, good reader, because you have a right to it. A man who sets down what happened two years ago can give a very tidy account by leaving out the things he did not know at the time. You may get a better opinion of his judgment that way, but you will get a worse account of the day. I knew where the strangers had been in the morning. I did not know where they were in the afternoon. Mr. Franklin knew no more of that than I did.

We went on towards the house. At the gate he took a small packet from an inner pocket of his coat. It was wrapped in paper, tied round with string, and sealed. He held it while he spoke, and I observed only that it would go easily into the pocket of my coat.

“Will you put this in the plate-room for me?” he said. “Mr. Bruff advises a locked place. You have the keys.”

“I have the keys, sir.”

“Let it remain there overnight. I shall ask you for it tomorrow.”

He gave me the packet. It had no name written on the outside that I saw, and I did not examine the seal. Being trusted with a thing is, to my thinking, a good reason for not turning it over to see what one can learn from the wrapping. I put it into my coat-pocket, away from the seven-and-sixpence which Mr. Franklin still owed me, and told him I would see to it at once.

At the house door we met Penelope. She had come out to watch for us; my daughter has never been backward in admitting that she likes to see Mr. Franklin Blake. She made her curtsey, greeted him very properly, and then caught at my sleeve.

“Father, Rosanna has not come in.”

“She was behind us on the beach,” I said. “Give her a little time.”

“I met her at the plantation gate after she left you. She said she was going on to Cobb’s Hole. She asked me to tell you, if you wanted her.”

“Did she say when she meant to return?”

“No. I asked her, but she went on without answering.”

Penelope looked troubled. Mr. Franklin had turned aside to speak to the man who was bringing his luggage up the drive, and did not hear the last of this. I told my daughter that I would speak to Rosanna when she came home. Rosanna had gone out by my leave to get a breath of air, and she had passed her dinner hour already. Cobb’s Hole was farther than the sands. Still, she had one friend there, and a young woman in her state of mind might reasonably wish for the society of a friend. That was how I argued the matter to Penelope, and how I tried to argue it to myself.

When Mr. Franklin came back to us, I took him through the hall and asked Penelope to see that he had something to eat. He declared he wanted nothing, which is what young gentlemen say until food is set before them. Leaving my daughter to deal with him, I went to the plate-room.

The plate-room door has a lock which has never given me cause to doubt it. I opened it with my own key, cleared a space on a shelf, and laid Mr. Franklin’s packet where no one could shift it by accident in reaching for the silver. Then I shut the door and tried it twice. There are men who find comfort in trying a lock once. I find comfort in trying it twice, the second trial being a check upon the man as well as upon the lock.

I carried the key away with me. The packet was safe for the night, so far as a locked door and my custody could make it safe. I knew nothing of what it held. If I had been disposed to make guesses, there was enough in Mr. Bruff’s letter and Mr. Franklin’s face to keep me occupied till morning. I had the house to attend to instead.

By the time I returned to the hall, Mr. Franklin had submitted to a plate of cold meat and was asking Penelope questions about the family. I heard him ask after my lady and Miss Rachel, and heard my daughter tell him that both were well. Miss Rachel, she added, had work to finish in her own rooms when she returned, and would see him tomorrow. Mr. Franklin accepted this news with a carelessness that did not quite agree with the number of questions he had asked.

My lady’s carriage came in while he was eating. I went out to receive her. She had expected her nephew later, and showed her surprise when I told her he was already in the house. Before I could explain his change of train, Mr. Franklin appeared at the door, with Penelope’s cold meat left unfinished behind him.

My lady embraced him and held him at arm’s length to look at his face. I had seen her do the same when he was a child. She said he had grown thin, and he said she had not altered. Neither statement was one which I was called upon to support. She led him into the morning-room, and, when I would have withdrawn, asked me to stay. It appeared that she wanted news of my household arrangements while her nephew was there.

“How did you get here so early, Franklin?” she asked, after he had sat down.

“By taking Mr. Bruff’s advice.”

He explained the letter without offering it to her. My lady heard him to the end, and asked no question about the person who had called at his lodgings. She was silent a little while, looking at the flowers on the table rather than at either of us. Then she turned to him.

“You have come to us from London,” she said, “and there is one subject on which I must speak before you have been here an hour. Colonel Herncastle is not to be discussed under my roof.”

Mr. Franklin’s hand, which had been playing with his watch-chain, came to rest.

“I understand you, aunt.”

“I mean it for Rachel’s sake as well as my own. I do not wish to hear his name at my table, or in any room of this house. Will you agree to that?”

“I give you my word.”

He said it plainly. My lady looked relieved, though she had never raised her voice. She then asked him whether his journey had tired him, and spoke of his father’s health. Mr. Franklin answered her in his pleasant way. If the talk had become strained for a moment, the strain passed before I left them.

Outside the morning-room I found Penelope waiting with a question in her eyes. I told her only that my lady had received Mr. Franklin and that she might have his luggage taken upstairs. A daughter may be very dear to her father, and still have no claim on a conversation which her mistress has held behind a closed door. Penelope knew me well enough to press me no further. She asked instead whether I had heard anything of Rosanna.

“I have heard what you told me,” I said.

“I wish she had come back.”

“So do I, my girl.”

The afternoon went on. Mr. Franklin’s luggage came safely into the house, and Mr. Franklin himself made much of being useful, though the uses to which he offered to put himself were chiefly of his own invention. He wished to find a book for my lady, sent a message to the stables, and spent some time at a window which commanded the drive. I saw him there more than once. Whether he watched for a visitor, or merely admired the country after his journey, he did not tell me. I had enough work of my own to do without putting questions to him for the pleasure of hearing a doubtful answer.

At tea I sent to ask if Rosanna had returned. Nancy brought back word that she had not, with an account of the work which, in consequence, had fallen to her. Nancy’s account would have been longer if I had let her finish it. I told her to make up Rosanna’s share of the work for the present, and to leave the scolding to me. She went away looking as if my share were the easier of the two. There was some justice in that, so I let her go.

The light held late, as it does with us towards the end of May. When the day’s business allowed me a little leisure, I went as far as the plantation gate. The path beyond it was empty. I could not see the sands from there, nor could I see Cobb’s Hole. I stood listening to the wind in the firs, which told me nothing at all, and came back to the house. Rosanna had made it plain that morning that she wished to be left alone. I had respected her wish on the beach as far as I could. Now she had gone to the one person in the neighbourhood whom she counted a friend. I resolved to wait.

My lady retired before it was quite dark. Mr. Franklin wished me good-night in the hall, and reminded me that he would ask for his packet in the morning. I told him it was locked where he had directed. He thanked me, and for a moment seemed about to say more. Instead, he went upstairs. I watched until he turned the corner of the landing, and then took the plate-room key from my pocket. It was there. I put it back, without going to try the door a third time.

Penelope came through the hall with a candle shortly afterwards. She had looked in the servants’ hall, and she shook her head before I could ask her. Rosanna had not come back from Cobb’s Hole. I told my daughter to leave word that Rosanna was to be let in when she arrived, and to go to bed herself. Penelope obeyed the first part. As to the second, I have my doubts. She had a kindness for Rosanna which would keep her awake longer than any order of mine could keep her asleep.

I took Robinson Crusoe out to my beehive chair in the back court. There was light enough left to read by for a little while, and I had a candle at my side when it failed. Mr. Franklin’s sealed packet lay behind the locked plate-room door. The key was in my pocket. I opened my book at the place marked by my thumb, read the same passage twice, and heard no step bringing Rosanna home.

Madame Ratignolle had hardly gone a dozen steps before she ceased to lean upon Robert. She declared that the stiffness was passing, and walked beside him with her usual easy movement. Now and then she turned her head to look back at the tent, where the children were making a great business of seating themselves in the places the lovers had left.

"Mrs. Pontellier will have them all upon her hands," said Robert.

"For five minutes. Then they will run after a crab."

He laughed, but continued to look toward the beach. Edna had seated herself outside the tent. One of the boys was speaking to her, and she appeared to listen; yet her eyes had gone beyond him to the water.

"She looked as though she had been a hundred miles away when we found her," Robert said.

"Perhaps she was," replied Madame Ratignolle.

"Then she came back the moment I spoke. I could see it."

He said no more. Adèle took his arm again where the path grew deep with sand, and they talked of the heat, which had made her joints feel old, and of the little girl he had carried down to the beach. At the house she went in search of a cool drink. Robert remained a while upon the steps, entertaining two children who had followed them and who demanded to know where the others had gone.

Edna stayed with the little company under the awning until the nurses began to call them home. Raoul had collected shells of no consequence, and wished her to admire each one separately. She did so, holding them in her palm while he supplied their histories. One had been dug out of the sand. Another had belonged, he assured her, to a fish. He took them back when he saw that her hand was full.

They walked toward the cottages with the sun high over the path. The children ran ahead, stopped, and ran ahead again. Edna carried her hat by its brim and let the wind loosen her hair. Her talk with Adèle had left her with a faint uneasiness. She could not remember precisely what she had said, only the pleasure of saying it, and now she wondered whether the pleasure had led her into foolishness. Madame Ratignolle had listened without astonishment. That much Edna could recall distinctly.

A boy from the house came to the cottage shortly before noon with a telegram. Edna broke it open while the children disputed possession of a wooden horse on the gallery. Léonce would not come out to Grand Isle that weekend. Business detained him in the city. He hoped the boys were well.

She read the brief message twice. The customary Saturday arrival had seemed as much a part of the week as its close. Léonce would miss a boat journey and a Sunday at the hotel; she would miss the sound of his voice in the cottage, his questions concerning the children, the little account she gave of her days. She folded the paper and placed it beneath a book upon the table, where it lay with one corner showing.

At dinner she mentioned the telegram to Madame Lebrun. Madame expressed regret, asked whether Monsieur Pontellier was quite well, and observed that men never knew when their affairs would release them. Robert heard the news across the table. He looked at Edna, but a dish was being passed to him and he made no remark. She had not expected one.

Later Madame Ratignolle came to the cottage with her needlework. She found Edna sitting in the shade, attempting to mend a tear in Raoul's little coat. Edna put the coat aside when her friend appeared.

"You have been to the beach again?" Adèle asked, seeing the hat upon the floor.

"Only this morning."

"I thought you might have gone back. You were so far away when Robert found us."

Edna looked at her. Adèle drew a length of thread through the work in her lap.

"That is what he said as we walked home. 'She looked as though she had been a hundred miles away when we found her.' He was quite serious."

"I was sitting beside you."

"Yes," said Adèle. "I told him perhaps you were."

Edna smiled, though the words disturbed her a little. She asked what distance Madame Ratignolle had supposed her to travel, but Adèle would name none. The children came in then, hot and clamorous, and Edna told her of Léonce's telegram. Adèle was sorry he could not come. She spoke of the disappointment the boys might feel, and offered to have them over to play if Edna wanted an hour to herself. Before leaving, she picked up Raoul's coat and finished the seam Edna had begun.

The afternoon grew quiet after the children went out with their nurse. Edna lay for a time upon her bed, but she did not sleep. Through the open window she heard voices from the main house, a screen door falling shut, the soft, continuous stirring of leaves. The corner of Léonce's telegram showed beneath the book when she passed through the room. She pushed it farther under and took her bath-house key from the table.

She went down the sandy path without a companion. The sun was still strong, though the wind had moderated. A few persons were on the beach, some sitting in the shade of the bath-houses, others walking near the edge of the water. No one called to her. She entered the Pontellier compartment and changed her dress.

Edna had gone into the sea often that summer. She could stand against the waves and let them break upon her; she could move about where her feet found the sand. When she tried to swim, she lost the use of her arms in a sudden fear of what lay beneath her, though she had been shown more than once how little was required of them. She had become accustomed to Robert's encouragement, to the laughing advice of every one near enough to offer it. That afternoon there was no one to instruct her.

She waited until the persons nearest the water had gone up toward the awning. Then she waded in where the shore fell away gradually. The water was warm at the surface and cooler about her legs. She turned to face the beach, bent her knees and put her hands forward. At first she rose at once. She tried again, lifting her feet from the bottom before she could think of drawing them back. Her arms struck out unevenly. For a moment she felt herself borne along; then one foot touched sand, and she stood up, breathing hard.

It was so little a distance that she could see the marks her feet had made before she began. She moved farther along the shore and tried once more. This time she kept her body upon the water long enough to make several strokes. The effort was awkward and hurried. She could not have said afterward what she had done differently, but when she stood, she knew that she had moved without the support of the ground.

A wave broke against her shoulder and filled her mouth with salt. She laughed, turned toward the bath-house, and came out of the water. There was no one close enough to have noticed. She was glad of it. She wished to keep the small achievement to herself, at least until she understood it better.

She dressed slowly. When she came out upon the little gallery, the lady in black was seated on the porch of the neighboring bath-house. Her book lay closed upon her knee. Edna had seen her there many mornings, and had never heard her speak.

"Has the wind fallen?" the lady asked.

Edna turned, surprised that the question was meant for her. "A little. The water is easier than it was this morning."

"I thought so. I have been sitting here to hear it." The lady looked out toward the sea. "It makes a great noise on some days."

"Yes," said Edna.

The lady opened her book, but did not yet begin to read. She asked whether Edna's little boys had gone home. She had seen them with the other children under the tent that morning. Edna told her they were at the house, and the lady said that they had seemed content with their new possession of it. Then she bent her head over the book.

Edna walked back by the path through the camomile. She found the children on the cottage gallery when she returned. They wanted their supper, and Raoul wished to show her where Adèle had mended his coat. He discovered that he could scarcely find the tear. Edna examined the seam and agreed that Madame Ratignolle had done it beautifully.

After supper Robert passed the cottage with a young man from the hotel. They paused to speak to the boys. Robert asked Edna if she had gone into the water that afternoon; he had seen her hat hanging beside the bath-house door when he walked by. She said that she had. He began to tell her how he had spent the afternoon, but his companion called him, and they went on together. Edna watched them until the trees hid them from view. She was pleased that Robert had asked, and pleased that she had said no more.

The boys resisted bedtime and then fell asleep almost at once. Their nurse left the cottage quiet. Edna went out upon the gallery alone. The lamps at the main house shone through the leaves, and now and then a voice carried across the dark space between the buildings. She could hear the sea, though she could not see it.

She sat with her hands resting on the arms of the chair. She thought of the few strokes she had made that afternoon and wondered whether she could make them again. After a while her thoughts returned to the morning on the beach. Adèle's voice was still plain to her, repeating Robert's remark. "She looked as though she had been a hundred miles away when we found her."