's fallen in love with me, Con?"

"I haven't the slightest doubt of it."

"Did she say so?"

There was a sound outside the door. They both started like plotters in
danger, and tried to look as if they had been discussing the weather
or the war. But no interruption occurred.

"Well, she did. I know I shall be thought mischievous. If she had the
faintest notion I'd breathed the least hint to you, she'd quarrel with
me eternally--of course. I couldn't bear another quarrel. If it had
been anybody else but you I wouldn't have said a word. But you're
different from anybody else. And I couldn't help it. You don't know
what Queen is. Queen's a white woman."

"So you said this afternoon."

"And so she is. She has the most curious and interesting brain, and
she's as straight as a man."

"I've never noticed it."

"But I know. I know. And she's an exquisite companion."

"And so on and so on. And I expect the scheme is that I am to make
love to her and be worried out of my life, and then propose to her and
she'll accept me." The word "scheme" brought up again his suspicion
of a conspiracy. Evidently there was no conspiracy, but there was a
plot--of one.... A nervous breakdown? Was Concepcion merely under an
illusion that she had had a nervous breakdown, or had she in truth had
one, and was this singular interview a result of it?

Concepcion continued with surprising calm magnanimity:

"I know her mind is strange, but it's lovely. No one but me has ever
seen into it. She's following her instinct, unconsciously--as we all
do, you know. And her instinct's right, in spite of everything. Her
instinct's telling her just now that she needs a master. And that's
exactly what she does need. We must remember she's very young--"

"Yes," G.J. interrupted, bursting out with a kind of savagery that he
could not explain. "Yes. She's young, and she finds even my age spicy.
There'd be something quite amusingly piquant for her in marrying a man
nearly thirty years her senior."

Concepcion advanced towards him. There she stood in front of him,
quite close to his chair, gazing down at him in her tight black
jersey and short white skirt; she was wearing black stockings now. Her
serious face was perfectly unruffled. And in her worn face was all her
experience; all the nights and days on the Clyde were in her face; the
scalping of the young Glasgow girl was in her face, and the failure
to endure either in work or in love. There was complete