ated.

'I am going away,' Monica began, when silence compelled her to speak.

'Yes, so you told me.'

'I can see that you can't understand why I have come.'

'Your note only said that you wished to see me.'

Their eyes met, and Monica knew in the moment that succeeded that she
was being examined from head to foot. It seemed to her that she had
undertaken something beyond her strength; her impulse was to invent a
subject of brief conversation and escape into the darkness. But Miss
Nunn spoke again.

'Is it possible that I can be of any service to you?'

'Yes. You might be. But--I find it is very difficult to say what I--'

Rhoda waited, offering no help whatever, not even that of a look
expressing interest.

'Will you tell me, Miss Nunn, why you behave so coldly to me?'

'Surely that doesn't need any explanation, Mrs. Widdowson?'

'You mean that you believe everything Mr. Widdowson has said?'

'Mr. Widdowson has said nothing to me. But I have seen your sister, and
there seemed no reason to doubt what she told me.'

'She couldn't tell you the truth, because she doesn't know it.'

'I presume she at least told no untruth.'

'What did Virginia say? I think I have a right to ask that.'

Rhoda appeared to doubt it. She turned her eyes to the nearest
bookcase, and for a moment reflected.

'Your affairs don't really concern me, Mrs. Widdowson,' she said at
length. 'They have been forced upon my attention, and perhaps I regard
them from a wrong point of view. Unless you have come to defend
yourself against a false accusation, is there any profit in our talking
of these things?'

'I _have_ come for that.'

'Then I am not so unjust as to refuse to hear you.'

'My name has been spoken of together with Mr. Barfoot's. This is wrong.
It began from a mistake.'

Monica could not shape her phrases. Hastening to utter the statement
that would relieve her from Miss Nunn's personal displeasure, she used
the first simple words that rose to her lips.

'When I went to Bayswater that day I had no thought of seeing Mr.
Barfoot. I wished to see someone else.'

The listener manifested more attention. She could not mistake the signs
of sincerity in Monica's look and speech.

'Some one,' she asked coldly, 'who was living with Mr. Barfoot?'

'No. Some one in the same building; in another flat. When I knocked at
Mr. Barfoot's door, I knew--or I felt sure--no one would answer. I knew
Mr. Barfoot was going away that day--go