CHAPTER VIII


A few days later I again heard Dawling on my stairs, and even before he
passed my threshold I knew he had something to tell.

"I've been down to Folkestone--it was necessary I should see her!" I
forget whether he had come straight from the station; he was at any rate
out of breath with his news, which it took me however a minute to apply.

"You mean that you've been with Mrs. Meldrum?"

"Yes, to ask her what she knows and how she comes to know it. It worked
upon me awfully--I mean what you told me." He made a visible effort to
seem quieter than he was, and it showed me sufficiently that he had not
been reassured. I laid, to comfort him and smiling at a venture, a
friendly hand on his arm, and he dropped into my eyes, fixing them an
instant, a strange distended look which might have expressed the cold
clearness of all that was to come. "I _know--_now!" he said with an
emphasis he rarely used.

"What then did Mrs. Meldrum tell you?"

"Only one thing that signified, for she has no real knowledge. But that
one thing was everything."

"What is it then?"

"Why, that she can't bear the sight of her." His pronouns required some