I found myself face to face.

I loved Phrida, and yet had I not obtained proof positive of her
clandestine visit to my friend on that fateful night? Were her
finger-prints not upon the little glass-topped specimen-table in his
room?

And yet so clever, so ingenious had she been, so subtle was her woman's
wit, that she had never admitted to me any knowledge of him further than
a formal introduction I had once made long ago.

I had trusted her--aye, trusted her with all the open sincerity of an
honourable man--for I loved her better than anything else on earth. And
with what result?

With my own senses of smell and of hearing I had detected her presence on
the stairs--waiting, it seemed, to visit my friend in secret after I had
left.

No doubt she had been unaware of my identity as his visitor, or she would
never dared to have lurked there.

As I stood with my hand tenderly upon her arm, the gaze of my
well-beloved was directed to the ground. Guilt seemed written upon her
white brow, for she dared not raise her eyes to mine.

"Phrida, you know that woman--you can't deny knowledge of her--can you?"

She stood like a statue, with her hands clenched, her mouth half open,
her jaws fixed.

"I--I--I don't know what you mean," she faltered at last, in a hard voice
quite unusual to her.

"I mean that I have a suspicion, Phrida--a horrible suspicion--that you
have deceived me," I said.

"How?" she asked, with her harsh, forced laugh.

I paused. How should I tell her? How should I begin?

"You have suppressed from me certain knowledge of which you know I ought
to have been in possession for my friend Digby's sake, and----"

"Ah! Digby Kemsley again!" she cried impatiently. "You've not been the
same to me since that man disappeared."

"Because you know more concerning him than you have ever admitted to me,
Phrida," I said in a firm, earnest voice, grasping her by the arm and
whispering into her ear. "Now, be open and frank with me--tell me the
truth."

"Of what?" she faltered, raising her eyes to mine with a frightened look.

"Of what Mrs. Petre has told me."

"That woman! What has she said against me?" my love demanded with quick
resentment.

"She is not your friend, in any case," I said slowly.

"My friend!" she echoed. "I should think not. She----"

And my love's little hands clenched themselves and she burst again into
tears without concluding her sentence.

"I know, dearest," I said, striving to cal