“Certainly, auntie.  I won’t leave the house.  That’s all right.”

No, she assuredly had not missed the notes!  He was strangely uplifted.  He felt almost joyous in his relief.  Could he tell her now as she lay in her bed?  Impossible!  He would tell her in the morning.  It would be cruel to disturb her now with such a revelation of her own negligence.  He vibrated with sympathy for her, and he was proud to think that she appreciated the affectionate, comprehending, subdued intimacy of his attitude towards her as he leaned gracefully on the foot of the bed, and that she admired him.  He did not know, or rather he absolutely did not realize, that she was acquainted with aught against his good fame.  He forgot his sins with the insouciance of an animal.

“Don’t stay up too late,” said Mrs. Maldon, as it were dismissing him.  “A long night will do you no harm for once in a way.”  She smiled.  “I know you’ll see that everything’s locked up.”

He nodded soothingly, and stood upright.

“You might turn the gas down, rather low.”

He tripped to the gas-bracket and put the room in obscurity.  The light of the street lamp irradiated the pale green blinds of the two windows.

“That do?”

“Nicely, thank you!  Good-night, my dear.  No, I’m not ill.  But you know I have these little attacks.  And then bed’s the best place for me.”  Her voice seemed to expire.

He crept across the wide carpet and departed with the skill of a trained nurse, and inaudibly closed the door.

From the landing the whole of the rest of the house seemed to offer itself to him in the night as an enigmatic and alluring field of adventure ...  Should he drop the notes under the chair on the landing, where he had found them?...  He could not!  He could not!...  He moved to the head of the stairs, past the open door of the spare bedroom, which was now dark.  He stopped at the head of the stairs, and then descended.  The kitchen was lighted.

“Are you there?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Rachel.

“May I come?”

“Why, of course!” Her voice trembled.

He went towards the other young creature in the house.  The old one lay above, in a different world remote and foreign.  He and Rachel had the ground floor and all its nocturnal enchantment to themselves.

III

Mechanically, as he went into the kitchen, he drew his cigarette-case from his pocket.  It was the proper gesture of a man in any minor crisis.  He was not a frequenter of kitchens, and this visit, even more than the brief first one, seemed to him to be adventurous.