Then Jane understood.

She said, ’You thought it was me....  And I thought it was you!  Is it me you’ve been so ashamed of all this time then, not yourself?’

‘Yes,’ he said, still staring at her.  ’Of course....  It wasn’t you, then....  And you thought it was me?...  But how could you think that, Jane?  I’d have told; I wouldn’t have been such a silly fool as to sneak away and say nothing.  You might have known that.  You must have had a pretty poor opinion of me, to think I’d do that....  Good lord, how you must have loathed me all this time!’

‘No, I haven’t.  Have you loathed me, then?’

He said quickly, ‘That’s different,’ but he didn’t explain why.

After a moment he said, ‘It was just an accident then, after all.’

’Yes ...  Clare was talking to him when he fell....  She’s only just told about it, because you were being suspected.  But I never know whether to believe Clare; she’s such a gumph.  I had to ask you....  What made you suspect me, by the way?’

’Your manner, that first morning.  You dragged me into the dining-room, do you remember, and talked about how they all thought it was an accident, and no one would guess if we were careful, and I wasn’t to say anything.  What else was I to think?  It was really your own fault.’

Jane said, ’Well, anyhow, we’re quits.  We’ve both spent six weeks thinking each other murderers.  Now we’ll stop....  I don’t wonder you fought shy of me, Arthur.’

He looked at her curiously.

’Didn’t you fight shy of me, then?  You can hardly have wanted to see much of me in the circumstances.’

’I didn’t, of course.  It was awful.  Besides, you were so queer and disagreeable.  I thought it was a guilty conscience, but really I suppose it was disgust.’

‘Not disgust.  No.  Not that.’  He seemed to be balancing the word ‘disgust’ in his mind, considering it, then rejecting it.  ‘But,’ he said, ’it would have been difficult to pretend nothing had happened, wouldn’t it....  I didn’t blame you, you know, for the thing itself.  I knew it must have been an accident—­that you never meant ... what happened....  Well, anyhow, that’s all over.  It’s been pretty ghastly.  Let’s forget it....  What Potterish minds you and I must have, Jane, to have built up such a sensational melodrama out of an ordinary accident.  I think Lord Pinkerton would find me useful on one of his papers; I’m wasted on the Fact.  You and I; the two least likely people in the world for such fancies, you’d think—­except Katherine.  By the way, Katherine half thought I’d done it, you know.  So did Jukie.’

’I’m inclined now to think that K thought I had, that evening she came to see me.  She was rather sick with me for letting you be accused.’

‘A regular Potter melodrama,’ said Gideon.  ’It might be in one of your mother’s novels or your father’s papers.  That just shows, Jane, how infectious a thing Potterism is.  It invades the least likely homes, and upsets the least likely lives.  Horrible, catching disease.’