ng as long as she had had the
child, when her knowing would not, he thought, have mattered half so
much. It would be horrible if she knew now. And yet sometimes her eyes
seemed to say to him: "Why not now? When nothing matters."

On the night before the funeral, the night they closed the coffin, he
came to her where she sat upstairs alone. He put his hand on her shoulder
and spoke her name. She shrank from him with a low cry. And again he
wondered if she knew.

The day after the funeral she told him that she was going away for a
month with Mrs. Gardner.

He said he was glad to hear it. It would do her good. It was the best
thing she could do.

He had meant to take her away himself. She knew it. Yet she had arranged
to go with Mrs. Gardner.

Then he was certain that she knew.

She went, with Mrs. Gardner, the next day. He and Dr. Gardner saw them
off at the station. He thanked Mrs. Gardner for her kindness, wondering
if she knew. The little woman had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand
and tried to speak to him, and broke down. He gathered that, whatever
Anne knew, her friend knew nothing.

The doctor was inscrutable. He might or he might not know. If he did,
he would keep his knowledge to himself. They walked together from the
station, and the doctor talked about the weather and the municipal
elections.

Anne was to be away a month. Majendie wrote to her every week and
received, every week, a precise, formal little letter in reply. She told
him, every week, of an improvement in her own health, and appeared
solicitous for his.

While she was away, he saw a great deal of the Hannays and of Gorst. When
he was not with the Hannays, Gorst was with him. Gorst was punctilious,
but a little shy in his inquiries for Mrs. Majendie. The Hannays made no
allusion to her beyond what decency demanded. They evidently regarded her
as a painful subject.

About a week before the day fixed for Anne's return, the firm of Hannay &
Majendie had occasion to consult its solicitor about a mortgage on some
office buildings. Price was excited and assiduous. Excited and assiduous,
Hannay thought, beyond all proportion to the trivial affair. Hannay
noticed that Price took a peculiar and almost morbid interest in the
junior partner. His manner set Hannay thinking. It suggested the legal
instinct scenting the divorce-court from afar.

He spoke of it to Mrs. Hannay.

"Do you think she knows?" said Mrs. Hannay.

"Of course she does