r, she drove to the little house in Greenwich
Village. Her ring was answered by Parr's niece, the woman with the
sleek bandeaux. Mr. Teck had been here twice, the second time late
last night. On that occasion he had taken Parr away with him.

"Where to?"

"Ah, ma'am, if only I knew!"

Those faded, medieval eyes gazed at the benefactress in a sudden
understanding and intimacy; and Lilla thought, "You, too, perhaps in
some region far removed from your pots and pans, have had such a moment
as this!" And she would have liked to let her face fall forward upon
the bosom of that threadbare working dress, feel those toil-worn arms
close round her, and utter the plea, "Tell me how to bear such things,
to survive, to emerge into that strange serenity of yours."

She drove to Brantome's. The whole world was now tumbling down about
her ears.

Brantome rose from his desk, where perhaps he had been sketching out
some brilliant appreciation of _Marco Polo_. After one glance at Lilla:

"What's happened?"

She showed him a look of hatred that embraced the whole room; for it
was not only he, but also this abode of his, that had entrapped her.
In accents that lashed him like whips she told him everything.

The old Frenchman sat down with a thump, and let his ruined face droop
forward. She heard the hoarse rumble:

"What shall I do now?"

"Find him!"

She returned to the house in the country.

In the middle of the third night, the telephone beside her pillow gave
a buzz, more terrifying than a shout of fire, an earthquake, a knife at
the throat. Brantome was speaking. Parr had returned to the house in
Greenwich Village. Lawrence Teck had sailed secretly, that day, for
Africa.

She replaced the receiver on the hook, rested her head on her hands,
and remained thus for a long while. In the end she formed the words:

"That woman."

She was thinking of "the infallible clairvoyant."

PART III

CHAPTER XLVIII

In the early morning, while the trees round the house were still full
of mist, Lilla, in her sitting room, at the tall Venetian desk of green
and gold lacquer, redrafted for the twentieth time the message that she
wanted to send after Lawrence Teck by wireless. The rich
scintillations from the polished surfaces before her enveloped her
distracted countenance in a new, greenish pallor, as she traced, now
heavily, now very faintly, the words:

"If you knew what you've done----"

She paused; for