ut the lines of her stooping figure caused Henry
Keenan to remove his hat, respectfully, before speaking to her.

"Could I assist you, madam?" he asked, close to her side by this time.

She turned, with a start, though her loss of self-possession lasted but
a moment. But as she turned her startled eyes to him Keenan's last
doubt as to whether or not it was a mere mistake withered away from his
mind. He knew, from the hot flush that mounted to her cheeks and from
the mellow contralto of her carefully modulated English voice, that she
belonged to that vaguely denominated yet rigidly delimited type that
would always be called a woman of breeding.

"If you please," she said shortly, stepping back from the door.

He bent over the key which she had left still in the lock.

As he did so he glanced at the number which the key, protruding from
the lock, bore stamped on its flat brass bow. The number was
Thirty-seven, while the number which stood before his eyes on the door
was Forty-one.

Under ordinary circumstances the apparent accident would never have
given him a second thought. But all that day he had been oppressed by
a sense of hidden yet continual espionage. This feeling had followed
him from the moment he had landed in Genoa. He had tried to argue it
down, inwardly protesting that such must be merely the obsession of all
fugitives. And now, even to find an unknown and innocent-appearing
young woman trying to force an entrance into his room aroused all his
latent cautiousness. Yet a moment later he felt ashamed of his
suspicions.

"Why, this is room Forty-one," she cried, over his shoulder. He
withdrew the key and looked at it with a show of surprise.

"And your key, I see, is Thirty-seven," he explained.

She was laughing now, a little, through her confusion. It was a very
pleasant laugh, he thought. She looked a frank and companionable
woman, with her love for the merriment of life touched with a sort of
autumnal and wistful sobriety that in no way estranged it from a sense
of youth. But, above all, she was a beautiful woman, thought the
listless and lonely man. He looked at her again. It was his suspicion
of being spied upon, he felt, that had first blinded him to the charm
of her appearance.

"It was the second turn in the corridor that threw me out," she
explained. He found himself walking with her to her door.

She had thought to find some touch of the Boweryite about him, some
outcroppi