“For a certain time.”

“But how long?”

She thought; she must do the young woman, and she knew exactly what the young woman would say and, still more, wouldn’t.  “Can you give me the date?”

“Oh God, no!  It was some time or other in August—­toward the end.  It was to the same address as the one I gave you last night.”

“Oh!” said the girl, knowing at this the deepest thrill she had ever felt.  It came to her there, with her eyes on his face, that she held the whole thing in her hand, held it as she held her pencil, which might have broken at that instant in her tightened grip.  This made her feel like the very fountain of fate, but the emotion was such a flood that she had to press it back with all her force.  That was positively the reason, again, of her flute-like Paddington tone.  “You can’t give us anything a little nearer?” Her “little” and her “us” came straight from Paddington.  These things were no false note for him—­his difficulty absorbed them all.  The eyes with which he pressed her, and in the depths of which she read terror and rage and literal tears, were just the same he would have shown any other prim person.

“I don’t know the date.  I only know the thing went from here, and just about the time I speak of.  It wasn’t delivered, you see.  We’ve got to recover it.”

CHAPTER XXIII

She was as struck with the beauty of his plural pronoun as she had judged he might be with that of her own; but she knew now so well what she was about that she could almost play with him and with her new-born joy.  “You say ‘about the time you speak of.’  But I don’t think you speak of an exact time—­do you?”

He looked splendidly helpless.  “That’s just what I want to find out.  Don’t you keep the old ones?—­can’t you look it up?”

Our young lady—­still at Paddington—­turned the question over.  “It wasn’t delivered?”

“Yes, it was; yet, at the same time, don’t you know? it wasn’t.”  He just hung back, but he brought it out.  “I mean it was intercepted, don’t you know? and there was something in it.”  He paused again and, as if to further his quest and woo and supplicate success and recovery, even smiled with an effort at the agreeable that was almost ghastly and that turned the knife in her tenderness.  What must be the pain of it all, of the open gulf and the throbbing fever, when this was the mere hot breath?  “We want to get what was in it—­to know what it was.”

“I see—­I see.”  She managed just the accent they had at Paddington when they stared like dead fish.  “And you have no clue?”

“Not at all—­I’ve the clue I’ve just given you.”

“Oh the last of August?” If she kept it up long enough she would make him really angry.

“Yes, and the address, as I’ve said.”

“Oh the same as last night?”

He visibly quivered, as with a gleam of hope; but it only poured oil on her quietude, and she was still deliberate.  She ranged some papers.  “Won’t you look?” he went on.