lplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness and
their proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by the fact of their
sitting so close to each other, and yet being unable to see each
other's faces.

"What a pretty carriage! Is it May's?" she asked, suddenly turning her
face from the window.

"Yes."

"It was May who sent you to fetch me, then? How kind of her!"

He made no answer for a moment; then he said explosively: "Your
husband's secretary came to see me the day after we met in Boston."

In his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to M. Riviere's
visit, and his intention had been to bury the incident in his bosom.
But her reminder that they were in his wife's carriage provoked him to
an impulse of retaliation. He would see if she liked his reference to
Riviere any better than he liked hers to May! As on certain other
occasions when he had expected to shake her out of her usual composure,
she betrayed no sign of surprise: and at once he concluded: "He writes
to her, then."

"M. Riviere went to see you?"

"Yes: didn't you know?"

"No," she answered simply.

"And you're not surprised?"

She hesitated. "Why should I be? He told me in Boston that he knew
you; that he'd met you in England I think."

"Ellen--I must ask you one thing."

"Yes."

"I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn't put it in a letter.
It was Riviere who helped you to get away--when you left your husband?"

His heart was beating suffocatingly. Would she meet this question with
the same composure?

"Yes: I owe him a great debt," she answered, without the least tremor
in her quiet voice.

Her tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that Archer's turmoil
subsided. Once more she had managed, by her sheer simplicity, to make
him feel stupidly conventional just when he thought he was flinging
convention to the winds.

"I think you're the most honest woman I ever met!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, no--but probably one of the least fussy," she answered, a smile in
her voice.

"Call it what you like: you look at things as they are."

"Ah--I've had to. I've had to look at the Gorgon."

"Well--it hasn't blinded you! You've seen that she's just an old bogey
like all the others."

"She doesn't blind one; but she dries up one's tears."

The answer checked the pleading on Archer's lips: it seemed to come
from depths of experience beyond his reach. The slow advance of the
ferry-boat had ceased, and her bows bu