saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance
between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect
figure, a change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed
by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her
hand--as she did to me--it was as if across a broad river. Trick
of manner or a bit of truth peeping out? Perhaps she's really one
of those inaccessible beings. What do you think, Blunt?"

It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of
sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather
disturbed me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But
after a while he turned to me.

"That thick man," he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, "is as
fine as a needle. All these statements about the seduction and
then this final doubt expressed after only two visits which could
not have included more than six hours altogether and this some
three years ago! But it is Henry Allegre that you should ask this
question, Mr. Mills."

"I haven't the secret of raising the dead," answered Mills good
humouredly. "And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a
liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life."

"And yet Henry Allegre is the only person to ask about her, after
all this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he
discovered her; all the time, every breathing moment of it, till,
literally, his very last breath. I don't mean to say she nursed
him. He had his confidential man for that. He couldn't bear women
about his person. But then apparently he couldn't bear this one