"I know," he said slowly. "Only I can't quite forget. I simply can't,
Clarice."

She smiled at him and touched his face with a light hand.

"Shall I tell you why? Because even if I am old--and thirty-six isn't so
very dreadful--you are still in love with me."

She went with him to the door and smiled as he drove away, smiled and
waved as he reappeared round a distant bend, and watched him return her
signal, and then she went back into the large drawing-room and her face
grew grey and pinched, and she sat with her chin propped on her hands,
thinking.

She had proved that there are more fools in the world than those who go
about disguised as Heads of Police, and had added another specimen to
the general list, but she found no mirth in the idea as she considered
it.




X

IN WHICH CRAVEN JOICEY IS OVERCOME BY A SUDDEN INDISPOSITION, AND
HARTLEY, WITHOUT LOOKING FOR HIM, FINDS THE MAN HE WANTED


It seemed to Hartley that Fate had dealt very hardly with him. He was
interested in the case of the boy Absalom, and he felt that the