It cannot be said that his self-questioning had produced any answer more definite than that before he found himself journeying back toward Boston.  The final impulse had been given him while he was still loitering aimlessly in Chicago by a letter from Mrs. Temple.

“If you have nothing better to do, dear Peter,” she wrote, “we shall be delighted if you can come to us for a week or two.  Dear Drusilla is with us once again, and you can imagine our joy at having her.  It would seem like old times if you were here to complete the little circle.  The room you used to have in your college vacations—­after dear Tom and Sarah were taken from us—­is all ready for you; and Drusilla would like to know you were here to occupy it just as much as we.”

In accepting this invitation Davenant knew himself to be drawn by a variety of strands of motive, no one of which had much force in itself, but which when woven together lent one another strength.  Now that he had come, he was glad to have done it, since in the combination of circumstances he felt there must be an acknowledged need of a young man, a strong man, a man capable of shouldering responsibilities.  He would have been astonished to think that that could be gainsaid.

The feeling was confirmed in him after he had watched the tip of his smoked-out cigarette drop, like a tiny star, into the current of the Charles, and had re-entered Rodney Temple’s house.

“Here’s Peter!”

It was Drusilla’s voice, with a sob in it.  She was sitting on the stairs, three steps from the top, huddled into a voluminous mauve-and-white dressing-gown.  In the one dim light burning in the hall her big black eyes gleamed tragically, as those of certain animals gleam in dusk.

“Oh, Peter, dear, I’m so glad you’ve come!  The most awful thing has happened.”

That was Mrs. Temple who, wrapped in something fleecy in texture and pink in hue, was crouched on the lowest step, looking more than ever like a tea-cozy dropped by accident.

“What’s the matter?” Davenant asked, too deeply astonished even to take off his hat.  “Is it burglars?  Where’s the professor?”

“He’s gone to bed.  It isn’t burglars.  I wish it was.  It’s something far, far worse.  Collins told Drusilla.  Oh, I know it’s true—­though Rodney wouldn’t say so.  I simply ... know ... it’s ... true.”

“Oh, it’s true,” Drusilla corroborated.  “I knew that the minute Collins began to speak.  It explains everything—­all the little queernesses I’ve noticed ever since I came home—­and everything.”

“What is it?” Peter asked again.  “Who’s Collins?  And what has he said?”

“It isn’t a he; it’s a she,” Drusilla explained.  “She’s my maid.  I knew the minute I came into the room that she’d got something on her mind—­I knew it by the way she took my wrapper from the wardrobe and laid it on the bed.  It was too awful!”

“What was too awful?  The way she laid your wrapper on the bed?”