"What are you hiding? Do you really live with your aunt in Tavistock
Square?" he had asked that day, with all the fierce intensity of a
jealous lover.

Rachel had been stirred to a quick response. "Oh, if you don't believe
me, you'd better come and see for yourself," she had said. "Come this
afternoon--to tea." And afterwards, even when Adrian had humbly sought
to make amends for his unwarrantable jealousy, she had stuck to that
invitation. The moment that she had issued it, she had had a sense of
relief, a sense of having gratefully confessed her weakness. Adrian's
visit would consummate that confession, and thereafter she would have
no further secrets from him. And if he found that he could no longer
love her after he had seen her as she was, well, it would be better in
the end than that he should marry a simulacrum and make the discovery
by slow degrees.

"Yes, come this afternoon. We'll expect you about four" had been her
last words to him. And, now, she had to tell her aunt, who was still
unaware that such a person as Adrian Flemming existed. Rachel postponed
the telling until after lunch. Her knowledge of Miss Deane, though in
some respects it equalled her knowledge of her own mind, did not tell
her how her aunt would take this particular piece of news. She might
possibly, Rachel thought, be annoyed, fearful lest her beloved
looking-glass should be stolen from her. But she could wait no longer.
In half an hour Miss Deane would go upstairs to rest, and Adrian
himself would be in the house before she appeared again.

"I've something to tell you, aunt," Rachel began abruptly.

Miss Deane put up her lorgnette and surveyed her lovely portrait with