of
consolation.

"Come into the library, Liosha," said I, throwing the door open. I
followed her and settled her in an armchair before a big fire; and then
stood on the hearthrug, looking at her and feeling rather a fool. I
offered her refreshment. She declined. I commented again on her fine
physical appearance and asked her how she was. I drew her attention to
some beautiful narcissi and hyacinths that had come from the greenhouse.
The more I talked and the longer she regarded me in her grave, direct
fashion, the less I knew how to tell her, or how much to tell her, of
Doria's story. The drive had been a short one, giving time only for a
narration of the facts of the discovery. Liosha, although accepting my
apology, had sat mystified; also profoundly disturbed by Jaffery's
unconcealed agitation. Her life with him during the past four months had
drawn her into the meshes of the little drama. For her own sake, for
everybody's sake, we could not allow her to remain in complete
ignorance. . . . I gave her a cigarette and took one myself. After the
first puff, she smiled.

"You want to tell me something."

"I do. Something that is known only to four people in the world--and
they're in this house."

"If you tell me, I guess it'll be known only to five," said Liosha.

To have questioned the loyalty of her eyes would have been to insult
truth itself.

"All right," said I. "You'll be the fifth and last." And then, as simply
as I could, I told her all there was to know. She grasped the literary
details more quickly than I had anticipated. I found afterwards that the
long months of the voyage had not been entirely taken up with the
cooking of bacon and the swabbing of decks; there had been long
stretches of tedium beguiled by talk on most things under heaven, and
aided by her swift and jealous intelligence her mental horizon had
broadened prodigiously through constant association with a cultivated
man. . . . When I reached the point in my story where Jaffery gave up
the Persian expedition, she gripped the arms of her chair, and her lips
worked in their familiar quiver.

"He must have loved her to do that," she said in a low voice.

I went on, and the more involved I became in the disastrous affair, the
more was I convinced that it would he better for her to understand
clearly the imbroglio of Jaffery and Doria. You see, I knew all along,
as all along I hope I have given you to understand--ever since the day
when she as