lt as if you were in it somehow, as if you'd done something. I
half hoped you might say something, but you never did."

"One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I
didn't want you to know."

"I didn't know what you did. I don't know now, though Milly tried to
tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time."

"It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was."

"What can I think?"

"Think as I do; think--think----" She stopped herself. She was aware of
the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had
denied, the supernatural.

"It isn't a question of thinking," she said at last.

"Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?"

"No; it isn't believing either. It's knowing. Either you know it or you
don't know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you
mustn't think it's me."

"I rather like to. Why shouldn't I?"

She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious
expression there as of incipient terror.

"Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or----"

His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her.

"Or me."

"You?" he murmured gently, pitifully almost.

"Yes, me. Or even--well, one doesn't quite know where the harm might
end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you--to
work it that way--so that you might find the secret and do it for
yourself."

"I can't do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I'll take any view you
like of it, so long as you'll keep on at me."

"Of course I'll keep on."

At that he stopped suddenly in his path, and faced her.

"I say, you know, it isn't hurting you, is it?"

She felt herself wince. "Hurting me? How could it hurt me?"

"Milly said it couldn't."

Agatha sighed. She said to herself, "Milly--if only Milly hadn't
interfered."

"Don't you think it's cold here in the wood?" she said.

"Cold?"

"Yes. Let's go back."

As they went Milly met them at the Farm bridge. She wanted Agatha to
come and stay for supper; she pressed, she pleaded, and Agatha, who had
never yet withstood Milly's pleading, stayed.

It was from that evening that she really dated it, the thing that came
upon her. She was aware that in staying she disobeyed an instinct that
told her to go home. Otherwise she could not say that she had any sort
of premonition. Supper was laid in the long room with the yellow blinds,
where she had first found Harding Powell. The