ich she would use up
vainly in the danger and fatigue of a struggle with society may be turned
into devoted attachment to the man who offers her a way of escape from
what can be only a life of moral anguish. I don't mention the physical
difficulties."

Glancing at Fyne out of the corner of one eye I discovered that he was
attentive. He made the remark that I should have said all this to his
wife. It was a sensible enough remark. But I had given Mrs. Fyne up. I
asked him if his impression was that his wife meant to entrust him with a
letter for her brother?

No. He didn't think so. There were certain reasons which made Mrs. Fyne
unwilling to commit her arguments to paper. Fyne was to be primed with
them. But he had no doubt that if he persisted in his refusal she would
make up her mind to write.

"She does not wish me to go unless with a full conviction that she is
right," said Fyne solemnly.

"She's very exacting," I commented. And then I reflected that she was
used to it. "Would nothing less do for once?"

"You don't mean that I should give way--do you?" asked Fyne in a whisper
of alarmed suspicion.

As this was exactly what I meant, I let his fright sink into him. He
fidgeted. If the word may be used of so solemn a personage, he wriggled.
And when the horrid suspicion had descended into his very heels, so to
speak, he became very still. He sat gazing stonily into space bounded by
the yellow, burnt-up slopes of the rising ground a couple of miles away.
The face of the down showed the white scar of the quarry where not more
than sixteen hours before Fyne and I had been groping in the dark with
horrible apprehension of finding under our hands the shattered body of a
girl. For myself I had in addition the memory of my meeting with her.
She was certainly walking very near the edge--courting a sinister
solution. But, now, having by the most unexpected chance come upon a
man, she had found another way to escape from the world. Such world as
was open to her--without shelter, without bread, without honour. The
best she could have found in it would have been a precarious dole of pity
diminishing as her years increased. The appeal of the abandoned child
Flora to the sympathies of the Fynes had been irresistible. But now she
had become a woman, and Mrs. Fyne was presenting an implacable front to a
particularly feminine transaction. I may say triumphantly feminine. It
is true that Mrs. Fyne did not wan