son in the High Street in the afternoon.

April 14. I do wish I could get away from the place altogether. I
shall fly to Agatha's side the very day that the term closes. I
suppose it is pitiably weak of me, but this woman gets upon my nerves
most terribly. I have seen her again, and I have spoken with her.

It was just after lunch, and I was smoking a cigarette in my study,
when I heard the step of my servant Murray in the passage. I was
languidly conscious that a second step was audible behind, and had
hardly troubled myself to speculate who it might be, when suddenly a
slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with
apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of
sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that
I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the
muffled thud of the foot fall. Another instant and my servant had
shown her in.

I did not attempt the usual conventions of society, nor did she. I
simply stood with the smouldering cigarette in my hand, and gazed at
her. She in her turn looked silently at me, and at her look I
remembered how in these very pages I had tried to define the expression
of her eyes, whether they were furtive or fierce. To-day they were
fierce--coldly and inexorably so.

"Well," said she at last, "are you still of the same mind as when I saw
you last?"

"I have always been of the same mind."

"Let us understand each other, Professor Gilroy," said she slowly. "I
am not a very safe person to trifle with, as you should realize by now.
It was you who asked me to enter into a series of experiments with you,
it was you who won my affections, it was you who professed your love
for me, it was you who brought me your own photograph with words of
affection upon it, and, finally, it was you who on the very same
evening thought fit to insult me most outrageously, addressing me as no
man has ever dared to speak to me yet. Tell me that those words came
from you in a moment of passion and I am prepared to forget and to
forgive them. You did not mean what you said, Austin? You do not
really hate me?"

I might have pitied this deformed woman--such a longing for love broke
suddenly through the menace of her eyes. But then I thought of what I
had gone through, and my heart set like flint.

"If ever you heard me speak of love," said I, "you know very well that
it was your voice which spoke, and not min