that to this woman he could not say mere anythings, slipped
into its opposite--that he could say everything. Strangers ten minutes
ago, they were at once in deep and intimate talk together. He found his
ideas readily followed, agreed with up to a point--the point which
permits discussion to start from a basis of general accord towards
speculation. In the excitement of ideas he neglected the uncomfortable
note that had stirred his caution, forgot the warning too. Her mind,
moreover, seemed known to him; he was often aware of what she was going
to say before he actually heard it; the current of her thoughts struck a
familiar gait, and more than once he experienced vividly again the odd
sensation that it all had happened before. The very sentences and
phrases with which she pointed the turns of her unusual ideas were never
wholly unexpected.

For her ideas were decidedly unusual, in the sense that she accepted
without question speculations not commonly deemed worth consideration at
all, indeed not ordinarily even known. Henriot knew them, because he had
read in many fields. It was the strength of her belief that fascinated
him. She offered no apologies. She knew. And while he talked, she
listening with folded arms and her black eyes fixed upon his own,
Richard Vance watched with vigilant eyes and listened too, ceaselessly
alert. Vance joined in little enough, however, gave no opinions, his
attitude one of general acquiescence. Twice, when pauses of slackening
interest made it possible, Henriot fancied he surprised another quality
in this negative attitude. Interpreting it each time differently, he yet
dismissed both interpretations with a smile. His imagination leaped so
absurdly to violent conclusions. They were not tenable: Vance was
neither her keeper, nor was he in some fashion a detective. Yet in his
manner was sometimes this suggestion of the detective order. He watched
with such deep attention, and he concealed it so clumsily with an
affectation of careless indifference.

There is nothing more dangerous than that impulsive intimacy strangers
sometimes adopt when an atmosphere of mutual sympathy takes them by
surprise, for it is akin to the false frankness friends affect when
telling "candidly" one another's faults. The mood is invariably
regretted later. Henriot, however, yielded to it now with something like
abandon. The pleasure of talking with this woman was so unexpected, and
so keen.

For Lady Statham believ