‘I wonder if someone has been playing a silly practical joke on me.’  She shrugged her shoulders.  ’But it’s too foolish.  If I were a suspicious woman,’ she smiled, ’I should think you had sent it yourself to get me out of the way.’

The idea flashed through Margaret that Oliver Haddo was the author of it.  He might easily have seen Nancy’s name on the photograph during his first visit to the studio.  She had no time to think before she answered lightly.

’If I wanted to get rid of you, I should have no hesitation in saying so.’

‘I suppose no one has been here?’ asked Susie.

‘No one.’

The lie slipped from Margaret’s lips before she had made up her mind to tell it.  Her heart gave a great beat against her chest.  She felt herself redden.

Susie got up to light a cigarette.  She wished to rest her nerves.  The box was on the table and, as she helped herself, her eyes fell carelessly on the address that Haddo had left.  She picked it up and read it aloud.

‘Who on earth lives there?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know at all,’ answered Margaret.

She braced herself for further questions, but Susie, without interest, put down the sheet of paper and struck a match.

Margaret was ashamed.  Her nature was singularly truthful, and it troubled her extraordinarily that she had lied to her greatest friend.  Something stronger than herself seemed to impel her.  She would have given much to confess her two falsehoods, but had not the courage.  She could not bear that Susie’s implicit trust in her straightforwardness should be destroyed; and the admission that Oliver Haddo had been there would entail a further acknowledgment of the nameless horrors she had witnessed.  Susie would think her mad.

There was a knock at the door; and Margaret, her nerves shattered by all that she had endured, could hardly restrain a cry of terror.  She feared that Haddo had returned.  But it was Arthur Burdon.  She greeted him with a passionate relief that was unusual, for she was by nature a woman of great self-possession.  She felt excessively weak, physically exhausted as though she had gone a long journey, and her mind was highly wrought.  Margaret remembered that her state had been the same on her first arrival in Paris, when, in her eagerness to get a preliminary glimpse of its marvels, she had hurried till her bones ached from one celebrated monument to another.  They began to speak of trivial things.  Margaret tried to join calmly in the conversation, but her voice sounded unnatural, and she fancied that more than once Arthur gave her a curious look.  At length she could control herself no longer and burst into a sudden flood of tears.  In a moment, uncomprehending but affectionate, he caught her in his arms.  He asked tenderly what was the matter.  He sought to comfort her.  She wept ungovernably, clinging to him for protection.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she gasped.  ’I don’t know what is the matter with me.  I’m only nervous and frightened.’