neck, a warm thinly clad body pressed to his own; then
withdrawn as quickly, with a gasp, and the most awful terror-stricken
whisper:

"Oh! Who is it?"

With a glacial shiver down his own spine, Keith answered

"A friend of Laurence. Don't be frightened!"

There was such silence that he could hear a clock ticking, and the sound
of his own hand passing over the surface of the wall, trying to find the
switch. He found it, and in the light which leaped up he saw, stiffened
against a dark curtain evidently screening off a bedroom, a girl
standing, holding a long black coat together at her throat, so that
her face with its pale brown hair, short and square-cut and curling up
underneath, had an uncanny look of being detached from any body. Her
face was so alabaster pale that the staring, startled eyes, dark blue or
brown, and the faint rose of the parted lips, were like colour stainings
on a white mask; and it had a strange delicacy, truth, and pathos, such
as only suffering brings. Though not susceptible to aesthetic emotion,
Keith was curiously affected. He said gently:

"You needn't be afraid. I haven't come to do you harm--quite the
contrary. May I sit down and talk?" And, holding up the keys, he added:
"Laurence wouldn't have given me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted
me?"

Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking at
a spirit--a spirit startled out of its flesh. Nor at the moment did it
seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd thought.
He stared round the room--clean and tawdry, with its tarnished gilt
mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered sofa. Twenty years
and more since he had been in such a place. And he said:

"Won't you sit down? I'm sorry to have startled you."

But still she did not move, whispering:

"Who are you, please?"

And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that
whisper, he answered:

"Larry's brother."

She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith's heart, and,
still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and sat
down on the sofa. He could see that her feet, thrust into slippers, were
bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled eyes, she looked
like a tall child. He drew up a chair and said:

"You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he's told me, you see." He
expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands together
on her knees, and said