“Not,” she said gravely, “if they’re left alone and not worried.  It will, of course, if you go and write and stir them all up again.”

“I see.  For the moment, then, they are placated?”

“Rather.” (I wondered on what grounds.) “We settled that last night.”

“Then—­” I said, “forgive my asking so many questions—­your people know you had this appointment with me?”

Her eyebrows took a little tortured twist in her pity for my stupidity.

“Oh no.  That would have upset them all for nothing.  It doesn’t do to worry them with silly details.  You see, they don’t know anything about you.”

It was exquisite, the innocence with which she brought it out.

“But,” I insisted, “that’s rather my point. You don’t know anything about me either, do you?”

“Yes, I do.  I knew,” she said, “the minute I came into the room.  If it comes to that, you don’t know anything about me.”

I said I did; I knew the minute she came into the room.  And she faced me with, “Well then, you see!” as if that settled it.

I suppose it did settle it.  I must have decided that since nobody could stop her, and I wasn’t, after all, a villain, if she insisted on being somebody’s typist, she had very much better be mine.  You see, she was so young.  I wanted to protect her.  Not that there was anything helpless and pathetic about her, anything, except her innocence, that appealed to me for protection.  On the contrary, she struck me as a creature of high courage and defiance.  That, of course, was what constituted the danger.  She would insist on taking risks.  Presently I heard myself saying, “Yes, the Close, Canterbury.  I’ve got that.  But where am I to find you here?”

She gave me an address that made me whistle.

I asked her if she knew anything, anything whatever, about the people of the house?

She said she didn’t.  She had chosen it because it had a nice green door, and there was an Angora cat on the door-step.  A large orange cat with green eyes.

Had she actually taken rooms there?

No.  But she had chosen them (I think she said because they had pretty chintz curtains.) She was going to take them now.

She had her hand on the door.  She was eager, like a child that has got off at last, after irritating delay.

I closed the door against her precipitate flight.  I said I thought we could settle that here, over the telephone.

And I settled it.

Having settled it, I sent Pavitt, my man, to get rooms for her that afternoon in Hampstead, with his sister-in-law, in a house overlooking the Heath.  I said I couldn’t promise her chintz curtains and a green door and an orange Angora cat with green eyes, but I thought she would be fairly comfortable with Mrs. Pavitt.

She was.

She told me a week later that the Hampstead rooms had chintz curtains and there was a Persian kitten too.  A blue Persian, with yellow eyes.