"This is me," she said, "I've got a room here. It was awfully good of
you to bring me."

"Not at all," he murmured.

"And you're sure you didn't mind my speaking to you like that? I
wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been Winny's friend."

"Of course not."

She was not sure whether he were answering her question or assenting to
her statement.

"And now," she said, "you're going home?"

"I suppose so." But he remained rooted to the doorstep, digging into a
crevice in it with his stick.

From the upper step she watched him intently.

"And we sha'n't see each other again."

_He_ was not sure whether it was a statement or a question.

"Sha'n't we?" He said it submissively, as if she really knew.

She was opening the door now and letting herself in. Miss Usher had a
latch key.

"Where?" said Miss Usher, softly, but with incision. She had turned now
and was standing on her threshold.

"Oh--anywhere--"

"Anywhere's nowhere." Miss Usher was smiling at him, but as she smiled
she stepped back and shut the door in his excited face.

He turned away, more stupefied than ever.

For the first time in his life he had encountered mystery. And he had no
name for it.

But he had made a note of her street, and of the number of her door.

CHAPTER VIII

That night Ransome was more than ever the prey of thought, if you could
call it thought, that mad racing and careering of his brain which
followed his encounter with Miss Usher. The stupefaction which had been
her first effect had given way to a peculiar excitement and activity of
mind. When he said to himself that Miss Usher had behaved queerly, he
meant that she had acted with a fine defiance of convention. And she had
carried it off. She had compelled him to accept her with her mystery as
a thing long known. She had pushed the barriers aside, and in a moment
she had established intimacy.

For only intimacy could have excused her interference with his innermost
affairs. She had given him an amount of warning and advice that he would
not have tolerated from his own mother. And she had used some charm that
made it impossible for him to resent it. What could well be queerer than
that he should be told by a girl he did not know that his case was
hopeless, that he must give up running after Winny Dymond, that he was
only persecuting a girl who didn't care for him. Ransome had no doubt
that she had spoken out of some secret and mystic knowledge of her
friend.