utely rigid; then almost inaudibly whispered: "Listen!
Someone out--out there!" And darting past him she turned out the light.

Almost at once came a knock on the door. He could feel--actually feel
the terror of this girl beside him in the dark. And he, too, felt
terror. Who could it be? No one came but Larry, she had said. Who else
then could it be? Again came the knock, louder! He felt the breath of
her whisper on his cheek: "If it is Larry! I must open." He shrank back
against the wall; heard her open the door and say faintly: "Yes. Please!
Who?"

Light painted a thin moving line on the wall opposite, and a voice which
Keith recognised answered:

"All right, miss. Your outer door's open here. You ought to keep it shut
after dark."

God! That policeman! And it had been his own doing, not shutting the
outer door behind him when he came in. He heard her say timidly in her
foreign voice: "Thank you, sir!" the policeman's retreating steps, the
outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again. That something
in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him
gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he
could not see her. They were all the same, these women; could not speak
the truth! And he said brusquely:

"You told me they didn't know you!"

Her voice answered like a sigh:

"I did not think they did, sir. It is so long I was not out in the town,
not since I had Larry."

The repulsion which all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at
those words. His brother--son of his mother, a gentleman--the property
of this girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this unspeakable event!
But she had turned up the light. Had she some intuition that darkness
was against her? Yes, she was pretty with that soft face, colourless
save for its lips and dark eyes, with that face somehow so touchingly,
so unaccountably good, and like a child's.

"I am going now," he said. "Remember! He mustn't come here; you mustn't
go to him. I shall see him to-morrow. If you are as fond of him as you
say--take care, take care!"

She sighed out, "Yes! oh, yes!" and Keith went to the door. She was
standing with her back to the wall, and to follow him she only moved her
head--that dove-like face with all its life in eyes which seemed saying:
'Look into us; nothing we hide; all--all is there!'

And he went out.

In the passage he paused before opening the outer door. He did not want
to meet that polic