ment to compare my story with his quickened
memories. The result of his meditation was his presently saying with a
good deal of rather feeble form:

"This is the first I hear of what you allude to. I think you must be
mistaken as to Mrs. Drayton Deane's having had any unmentioned, and
still less any unmentionable, knowledge about Hugh Vereker. She would
certainly have wished it--if it bore on his literary character--to be
used."

"It _was_ used. She used it herself. She told me with her own lips that
she 'lived' on it."

I had no sooner spoken than I repented of my words; he grew so pale that
I felt as if I had struck him. "Ah, 'lived'--!" he murmured, turning
short away from me.

My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. "I beg you to
forgive me--I've made a mistake. You _don't_ know what I thought you
knew. You could, if I had been right, have rendered me a service; and I
had my reasons for assuming that you would be in a position to meet me."

"Your reasons?" he asked. "What were your reasons?"

I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. "Come and sit down with
me here, and I'll tell you." I drew him to a sofa, I lighted another
cigarette and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker's one descent
from the clouds, I gave him an account of the extraordinary chain of
accidents that had in spite of it kept me till that hour in the dark.
I told him in a word just what I've written out here. He listened
with deepening attention, and I became aware, to my surprise, by his
ejaculations, by his questions, that he would have been after all not
unworthy to have been trusted by his wife. So abrupt an experience
of her want of trust had an agitating effect on him, but I saw that
immediate shock throb away little by little and then gather again into
waves of wonder and curiosity--waves that promised, I could perfectly
judge, to break in the end with the fury of my own highest tides. I may
say that to-day as victims of unappeased desire there isn't a pin to
choose between us. The poor man's state is almost my consolation; there
are indeed moments when I feel it to be almost my revenge.

Yes indeed, I say to myself, pen in hand, I can keep hold of the thread
and let it lead me back to the first impression. The little story is all
there, I can touch it from point to point; for the thread, as I call
it, is a row of coloured beads on a string. None of the beads are
missing--at least I think they're not: that