She looked at him with a flushed face ready to defy remonstance, but he stooped without speaking and picked up the thing that Bernard had tried to grind to powder, surveyed it with a lifted brow and set it back in its place.

Netta promptly collapsed upon the sofa.  “Oh, it is too bad!” she sobbed.  “It really is too bad!  Now I suppose you too—­are going to be brutal.”

Major Ralston cleared his throat.  There was certainly no sympathy in his aspect, but his manner was wholly lacking in brutality.  He was never brutal to women, and Netta Ermsted was his guest as well as his patient.

After a moment he sat down beside her, and there was nothing in the action to mark it as heroic, or to betray the fact that he yearned to stamp out of the room after Bernard and leave her severely to her hysterics.

“No good in being upset now,” he remarked.  “The thing’s done, and crying won’t undo it.”

“I don’t want to undo it!” declared Netta.  “I always did detest the horrible ferrety thing.  Tessa couldn’t have taken it Home with her either, so it’s just as well it’s gone.”  She dried her eyes with a vindictive gesture, and reached for the cigarettes.  Hysterics were impossible in this man’s presence.  He was like a shower of cold water.

“I shouldn’t if I were you,” remarked Major Ralston with the air of a man performing a laborious duty.  “You smoke too many of ’em.”

Netta ignored the admonition.  “They soothe my nerves,” she said.  “May I have a light?”

He searched his pockets, and apparently drew a blank.

Netta frowned in swift irritation.  “How stupid!  I thought all men carried matches.”

Major Ralston accepted the reproof in silence.  He was like a large dog, gravely presenting his shoulder to the nips of a toy terrier.

“Well?” said Netta aggressively.

He looked at her with composure.  “Talking about going Home,” he said, “at the risk of appearing inhospitable, I think it is my duty to advise you very strongly to go as soon as possible.”

“Indeed!” She looked back with instant hostility.  “And why?”

He did not immediately reply.  Whether with reason or not, he had the reputation for being slow-witted, in spite of the fact that he was a brilliant chess-player.

She laughed—­a short, unpleasant laugh.  She was never quite at her ease with him, notwithstanding his slowness.  “Why the devil should I, Major Ralston?”

He shrugged his shoulders with massive deliberation.  “Because,” he said slowly, “there’s going to be the devil’s own row if this man is hanged for your husband’s murder.  We have been warned to that effect.”

She shrugged her shoulders also with infinite daintiness, “Oh, a native rumpus!  That doesn’t impress me in the least.  I shan’t go for that.”

Major Ralston’s eyes wandered round the room as if in search of inspiration.  “Mary is going,” he observed.