to him. "Oh, Owen, where in the world
have you been? I walked miles and miles with Nurse and couldn't find
you, and we met Jean and he said he didn't know where you'd gone."

"Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there--that's the
beauty of it!" he laughed back at her. "But if you're good," he added,
"I'll tell you about it one of these days."

"Oh, now, Owen, now! I don't really believe I'll ever be much better
than I am now."

"Let Owen have his tea first," her mother suggested; but the young man,
declining the offer, propped his gun against the wall, and, lighting
a cigarette, began to pace up and down the room in a way that reminded
Darrow of his own caged wanderings. Effie pursued him with her
blandishments, and for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream
of nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned over to
help himself to tea.

"Where's Miss Viner?" he asked, as Effie climbed up on him. "Why isn't
she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?"

"Poor Miss Viner has a headache. Effie says she went to her room as soon
as lessons were over, and sent word that she wouldn't be down for tea."

"Ah," said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup. He stood up, lit another
cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in the room beyond.

From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on fantastic
chords, floated to the group about the tea-table. Under its influence
Madame de Chantelle's meditative pauses increased in length and
frequency, and Effie stretched herself on the hearth, her drowsy head
against the dog. Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same
time. "Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up," she paused to
say to Darrow as she went.

A few hours earlier, her request would have brought him instantly to his
feet. She had given him, on the day of his arrival, an inviting glimpse
of the spacious book-lined room above stairs in which she had gathered
together all the tokens of her personal tastes: the retreat in which,
as one might fancy, Anna Leath had hidden the restless ghost of Anna
Summers; and the thought of a talk with her there had been in his mind
ever since. But now he sat motionless, as if spell-bound by the play of
Madame de Chantelle's needles and the pulsations of Owen's fitful music.

"She will want to ask me about the girl," he repeated to himself, with a
fresh sense of the insidious taint that embittered all his thoughts;
the hand