's drawing-room.

He was scarcely conscious of how many hours he had spent during the last
terrible three days, with the middle-aged Frenchwoman who had been so
true and sure a friend of Margaret Pargeter. In Madame de Lera's
presence alone was he able, to a certain extent, to drop the mask which
he was compelled to wear in the presence of all others, and especially
in that of the man who, as time went on, seemed more and more to lean on
him and find comfort in his companionship.

Vanderlyn had walked the considerable distance from the Avenue du Bois
to the quiet street near the Luxembourg where Adele de Lera lived, and
all the way he had felt as if pursued by a mocking demon.

How much longer, so he asked himself, was his awful ordeal to endure?
The moments spent by him and Pargeter in Peggy's room had racked heart
and memory. He now fled to Madame de Lera as to a refuge from himself.

And yet? Yet he never looked round her pretty sitting-room, with its
faded, rather austere furnishings, without being vividly reminded of the
woman he had loved and whom he had now lost, for it was there that Peggy
had spent the most peaceful hours of her life since Pargeter had first
decided that henceforth they should live in Paris.

* * * * *

At last Madame de Lera came into the room; she gave her visitor a quick
questioning look. "Have you nothing new to tell?" she asked.

And, after a moment of scarcely perceptible hesitation, Vanderlyn
answered, "I have nothing new to tell," but as they both sat down, as he
saw how sad and worn the kind face had become in the last three days,
there came over him a strong wish to confide in her--to tell her the
whole truth. He longed, with morbid longing, to share his knowledge.
She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his
tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to
tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the
uselessness, of their present search.

Since last night the secret no longer seemed to be his alone.

But Vanderlyn resisted the temptation. He had no right to cast even half
his burden on another. Any moment the odious experience which had, it
seemed, already befallen Madame de Lera might be repeated. She might
again be cross-questioned by the police. In that event it was essential
that she should be still able truthfully to declare that she knew
nothing.

"I have just come from Tom Par