lp the discussion from your side or mine," he replied
quietly. "But rather than give you cause for interruption--I'll do
so. Why did you come down here?"

The mind of a woman works with amazing rapidity, but it is impossible
to see the direction it will take. There are little insects known
to our childish days as skip-jacks. Scratch them with the end of a
piece of grass, and they reward you for your pains--they will
jump--bound with one spasmodic leap and vanish. So is the working
of a woman's mind. You can be almost certain of the jump--but of the
direction--never.

"Why?" Traill insisted, and then Mrs. Durlacher turned her gaze to
the window, looked far away across the stretch of fields ploughed
and green, beyond the blue, rising land that lifts above Wycombe,
into that distance which holds all the intricate mysteries of a
woman's being. When a woman looks like this, a man strains eyes to
follow her. He realizes all the distance, but cannot with his utmost
effort decipher what it contains. And that very inability in him is
the strongest weapon that she holds. He sees the distance, yet there
is none. No wonder that he cannot discern its contents. There is no
distance. She is looking inwards--not outwards; searching her own
mind, searching his, and only playing the game of contemplation to
hide what she has found.

When Traill saw that expression of her face, he dropped the note of
brass from his voice.

"Why?" he asked again, almost gently.

Her lips bound tight together as though she were keeping back her
confession; her nostrils dilated, checking tears.

"I wanted to see you--that's all."

She said it with a shrug of the shoulders--the motion with which you
shake an unwelcome thought from your mind.

He pressed her further. "But you apparently knew I was bringing some
one?" he said.

She still looked towards her invisible horizon. "I guessed
that--guessed that from your letter--the way you said you wanted to
find no one down here. I thought you wouldn't mind my
coming--besides--there was no one to order anything for you, and
then--as I said--I wanted to see you."

"Yes, but why?" He took her arm, held the elbow in the cup of his
hand.

She looked once more--looked long into her distance--then turned,
petulantly almost, with a smothered sigh to the fireplace, rested
her feet upon the fender, and redirected her gaze into the heart of
the fire.

"Oh, it's no good talking about it now," she said. "Miss