‘You need not be afraid.’

His voice was quite natural once more, and she realized with a start that she was sitting quietly in the studio.  She looked around her with frightened eyes.  Everything was exactly as it had been.  The early night of autumn was fallen, and the only light in the room came from the fire.  There was still that vague, acrid scent of the substance which Haddo had burned.

‘Shall I light the candles?’ he said.

He struck a match and lit those which were on the piano.  They threw a strange light.  Then Margaret suddenly remembered all that she had seen, and she remembered that Haddo had stood by her side.  Shame seized her, intolerable shame, so that the colour, rising to her cheeks, seemed actually to burn them.  She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.

‘Go away,’ she said.  ‘For God’s sake, go.’

He looked at her for a moment; and the smile came to his lips which Susie had seen after his tussle with Arthur, when last he was in the studio.

‘When you want me you will find me in the Rue de Vaugiraud, number 209,’ he said.  ‘Knock at the second door on the left, on the third floor.’

She did not answer.  She could only think of her appalling shame.

‘I’ll write it down for you in case you forget.’

He scribbled the address on a sheet of paper that he found on the table.  Margaret took no notice, but sobbed as though her heart would break.  Suddenly, looking up with a start, she saw that he was gone.  She had not heard him open the door or close it.  She sank down on her knees and prayed desperately, as though some terrible danger threatened her.

But when she heard Susie’s key in the door, Margaret sprang to her feet.  She stood with her back to the fireplace, her hands behind her, in the attitude of a prisoner protesting his innocence.  Susie was too much annoyed to observe this agitation.

‘Why on earth didn’t you come to tea?’ she asked.  ’I couldn’t make out what had become of you.’

‘I had a dreadful headache,’ answered Margaret, trying to control herself.

Susie flung herself down wearily in a chair.  Margaret forced herself to speak.

‘Had Nancy anything particular to say to you?’ she asked.

‘She never turned up,’ answered Susie irritably.  ’I can’t understand it.  I waited till the train came in, but there was no sign of her.  Then I thought she might have hit upon that time by chance and was not coming from England, so I walked about the station for half an hour.’

She went to the chimneypiece, on which had been left the telegram that summoned her to the Gare du Nord, and read it again.  She gave a little cry of surprise.

’How stupid of me!  I never noticed the postmark.  It was sent from the Rue Littre.’

This was less than ten minutes’ walk from the studio.  Susie looked at the message with perplexity.