"Here--NOW?" Anna found no voice for more.

"She drove back with me," Miss Painter continued in the tone
of impartial narrative. "The cabman was impertinent. I've
got his number." She fumbled in a stout black reticule.

"Oh, I can't--" broke from Anna; but she collected herself,
remembering that to betray her unwillingness to see the girl
was to risk revealing much more.

"She thought you might be too tired to see her: she wouldn't
come in till I'd found out."

Anna drew a quick breath. An instant's thought had told her
that Sophy Viner would hardly have taken such a step unless
something more important had happened. "Ask her to come,
please," she said.

Miss Painter, from the threshold, turned back to announce
her intention of going immediately to the police station to
report the cabman's delinquency; then she passed out, and
Sophy Viner entered.

The look in the girl's face showed that she had indeed come
unwillingly; yet she seemed animated by an eager
resoluteness that made Anna ashamed of her tremors. For a
moment they looked at each other in silence, as if the
thoughts between them were packed too thick for speech; then
Anna said, in a voice from which she strove to take the edge
of hardness: "You know where Owen is, Miss Painter tells