“I didn’t know you—­were you with him?”

“Yes, we went together—­found the house in Lily Lane——­”

“And he went back to Equatoria—­right after that?”

Her tone had risen, the words rapid.

“Yes—­and without letting me know.”

Cairns noted vaguely that Beth’s face seemed farther away.

“David, you were with him—­those three days, beginning Monday, the first week in June—­you—­were—­with—­with—­him——?”

“Every minute, Beth——­”

“David, how did Mrs. Wordling know—­you were going?”

“Why, Beth, she didn’t.  No one knew——­”

“Are you sure?  Isn’t there some way she could have heard—­at the Club?”

He hesitated.  He had caught her eyes.  They horrified him....  He remembered.

“Why, yes.  We were talking—­it was the night he first spoke of going over to Nantucket with me.  Mrs. Wordling was behind at a near table.  I told him we’d better talk lower——­”

No sound escaped her.  Cairns sprang up at the sight of her uplifted face....  Her eyes turned vaguely toward the door of the little room.  He was standing before it.  She seemed only to know—­like some half-killed creature—­that she was hunted and must hide.  She couldn’t pass him into the little room, but turned behind the screen.  He did not hear her step, but something like the rush of a skirt, or a sigh.

There was no sound from the kitchenette.  Cairns could not think in this furious stress.  After a moment he called.

No answer.

It did not occur to him to go to her.  Scores of times he had been in the studio, but he had never passed that screen.

He called again....  Not a breath nor movement in answer.  He did not think of her as dead, but stricken with some awful madness.  She had stood transfixed....  Yet her old authority was about her.  He feared her anger.

“Dear—­Beth,—­won’t you let me come—­or do something?...  In God’s name—­what is it?”

He listened intently.

“Beth, I’ll go and get Vina—­shall I?”

Terrible seconds passed; then her voice came to him—­trailed forth, high-pitched, slow—­an eerie thing in his brain: 

“I thought I was a good queen, but I have been hard and wicked as hell.  I’m Bloody Beth....  He asked for bread and I gave him a stone....  Bloody Beth of the Middle Ages.”

“Beth—­please!” he cried.

“Go away—­oh, go away!”

Cairns’ only thought was to bring Vina to her.  Some awful hatred for himself came forth from the back room.  He turned to the outer door, saying, aloud: 

“Yes, Beth, I’ll go.”

The door shut and clicked after him—­without his touch—­it seemed very quickly.  He descended the steps—­a sort of slave to the routine of death—­as one who finds death, must run to perform certain formalities.  At the front door he stopped a second or two, as if his name had been called faintly.  He thought it a delusion—­and went out.  Crossing the street, he heard it again: