Hetty waited for a moment, then went on—­“And I thought you had given him the licence:  that is what made me so anxious to find—­”

A noise in the passage cut short her excuses:  a woman’s laugh.  Hetty knew of two women only in the house—­the landlady who had opened the door last night and a pert-looking slatternly servant she had passed at the foot of the stairs on her way to the cathedral.  She could not tell to which of these the voice belonged:  but the laugh and the jest it followed—­though she had not caught it—­were plainly at John Romley’s expense, and the laugh was horrible.

It rang on her ears like a street-door bell.  It seemed to tear down the mystery of the house and scream out its secret.  The young man at the window turned against his will and met Hetty’s eyes.  They were strained and staring.

She put out her hand.  “Where is the licence?” she asked.  “Give it to me.”

The change in her voice and manner confused him.  “My dear child, don’t be silly,” he blundered.

“Give me the licence.”

“Tut, tut—­let us understand one another like sensible folks.  You must not treat me like a boy, to be bounced in this fashion by John Romley.”  He began to whip up his temper again.  “Nasty tippling parson!  I’ve more than a mind to kick him into the street.”

Her eyes widened on his with growing knowledge, growing pain:  but faith lived in them yet.

“I thought you had given him the licence, to be ready for us.  Yes, yes—­you did say it!” Her hand went up to her bosom for his last letter, which she had worn there until last night.  Then she remembered:  she had left it upstairs.  Having him, she had no more need to wear it.

He read the gesture.  “You are right, dear, and I forgot.  I did say so, because I believed by the time the words reached you—­or thereabouts, at any rate—­”

“Then you have it.  Give it to me, please,” she commanded.

He stepped to the fire-place, unable to meet her eye.  “You hurried me,” he muttered:  “there was not time.”

For a moment she spread out both hands as one groping in the dark:  then the veil fell from her eyes and she saw.  The truth spoke to her senses first—­in the sordid disarray of breakfast, in the fusty smell of the room with its soiled curtains, its fly-blown mirror, its outlook on the blank court.  A whiff of air crept in at the open window—­flat, with a scullery odour which sickened her soul.  In her ears rang the laugh of the woman in the passage.

“What have you done?  What have you done to me?”

She crouched, shivering, like some beautiful wild creature entrapped.  He faced her again.  Her eyes were on his, but fastened there now by a shrinking terror.

“Hetty!”

She put up a hand and turned her face to the wall, as if to shut out him and the light.  He stepped to her, caught her by the wrist and forced her round towards him.  At the first touch he felt her wince.  So will you see a young she-panther wince and cower from her tamer’s whip.