m, then shook her head; she did not know it. Letting his hand
drop, she went back to the sofa.

"Tell me everything you know about her," she said imperiously. "What is
she like?--what is she like? What is the colour of her hair?"

Maurice was a poor hand at description. Questioned thus, he was not
even sure whether to call Ephie pretty or not; he knew that she was
small, and very young, but of her hair he could say little, except that
it was not black.

Louise caught at the detail. "Not black, no, not black!" she cried. "He
had black enough here," and she ran her hands through her own unruly
hair.

There was nothing she did not want to know, did not try to force from
his lips; and a relentless impatience seized her at his powerlessness.

"I must see her for myself," she said at length, when he had stammered
into silence. "You must bring her to me."

"No, that you really can't ask me to do."

She came over to him again, and took his hands. "You will bring her
here to-morrow--to-morrow afternoon. Do you think I shall hurt her? Is
she any better than I am? Oh, don't be afraid! We are not so easily
soiled."

Maurice demurred no more.

"For until I see her, I shall not know--I shall not know," she said to
herself, when he had pledged his word.

The tense expression of her face relaxed; her mouth drooped; she lay
back in the sofa-corner and shut her eyes. For what seemed a long time,
there was no sound in the room. Maurice thought she had fallen asleep.
But at his first light movement she opened her eyes.

"Now go," she said. "Please, go!" And he obeyed.

The night was cold, but, as he stood irresolute in the street, he wiped
the perspiration from his forehead. He felt very perplexed. Only one
thing was clear to him: he had promised to bring Ephie to see her the
next day, and, however wrong it might be, the promise was given and
must be kept. But what he now asked himself was: did not the bringing
of the child, under these circumstances, imply a tacit acknowledgment
that she was seriously involved?--a fact which, all along, he had
striven against admitting. For, after his one encounter with Ephie and
Schilsky, in the woods that summer, and the first firing of his
suspicions, he had seen nothing else to render him uneasy; a few weeks
later, Ephie had gone to Switzerland, and, on her return in September,
or almost directly afterwards--three or four days at most--Schilsky had
taken his departure. There had been, o