e urged her.

Yes, she remembered: that was the profoundest horror of it. Elwell had
died the day before her husband's disappearance; and this was Elwell's
portrait; and it was the portrait of the man who had spoken to her in
the garden. She lifted her head and looked slowly about the library. The
library could have borne witness that it was also the portrait of the
man who had come in that day to call Boyne from his unfinished letter.
Through the misty surgings of her brain she heard the faint boom
of half-forgotten words--words spoken by Alida Stair on the lawn at
Pangbourne before Boyne and his wife had ever seen the house at Lyng, or
had imagined that they might one day live there.

"This was the man who spoke to me," she repeated.

She looked again at Parvis. He was trying to conceal his disturbance
under what he imagined to be an expression of indulgent commiseration;
but the edges of his lips were blue. "He thinks me mad; but I'm not
mad," she reflected; and suddenly there flashed upon her a way of
justifying her strange affirmation.

She sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting till she
could trust her voice to keep its habitual level; then she said, looking
straight at Parvis: "Will you answer me one question, please? When was
it that Robert Elwell tried to kill himself?"

"When--when?" Parvis stammered.

"Yes; the date. Please try to remember."

She saw that he was growing still more afraid of her. "I have a reason,"
she insisted gently.

"Yes, yes. Only I can't remember. About two months before, I should
say."

"I want the date," she repeated.

Parvis picked up the newspaper. "We might see here," he said, still
humoring her. He ran his eyes down the page. "Here it is. Last
October--the--"

She caught the words from him. "The 20th, wasn't it?" With a sharp look
at her, he verified. "Yes, the 20th. Then you DID know?"

"I know now." Her white stare continued to travel past him. "Sunday, the
20th--that was the day he came first."

Parvis's voice was almost inaudible. "Came HERE first?"

"Yes."

"You saw him twice, then?"

"Yes, twice." She breathed it at him with dilated eyes. "He came first
on the 20th of October. I remember the date because it was the day
we went up Meldon Steep for the first time." She felt a faint gasp
of inward laughter at the thought that but for that she might have
forgotten.

Parvis continued to scrutinize her, as if trying to intercept her gaze.