“Then let us both avoid it,” I said, reaching again for my paper.  “We shall stop at Ipswich in an hour.  I will change carriages there.”

She turned round in her seat towards the window, as though to hide her face.  My own attempt at reading was a farce.  I watched her over the top of my paper.  She was looking out into the darkness, and she seemed to me to be crying.  Every now and then her shoulders heaved convulsively.  Suddenly she faced me once more.  There were traces of tears on her face; a small lace handkerchief was knotted up in her nervous fingers.

“Oh, I cannot,” she exclaimed plaintively.  “I cannot sit here alone with you and say nothing.  I know that I am judged already.  It does not matter.  I am your father’s wife, Guy.  You owe me at least some recognition of that fact.”

“I never knew my father,” I said, “except as the cause of my own miserable upbringing and friendless life.”

“You never knew him,” she answered, “and therefore you believe the worst.  He was weak, perhaps, and, exposed to a terrible temptation, he fell!  But he was not a bad man.  He was never that.”

“Do you think, Mrs. Smith-Lessing,” I said, struggling to keep my voice firm, though I felt myself trembling, “that this is a profitable discussion for either of us?”

“Why not?” she exclaimed almost fiercely.  “You have heard his story from enemies.  You have judged him from the report of those who were never his friends.  He sinned and he repented.  Better and worse men than he have done that.  If he were wholly bad, do you believe that after all these years I should care for him still?”

I held my peace.  The woman was leaning over towards me now.  She seemed to have lost the desire to attract.  Her voice had grown sharper and less pleasant, her carefully arranged hair was in some disorder, and the telltale blue veins by her temples and the crow’s feet under her eyes were plainly visible.  Her face seemed suddenly to have become pinched and wan, the flaming light in her strangely coloured eyes was a convincing assertion of her earnestness.  She was not acting now, though what lay behind the storm I could not tell.

“You seem afraid to talk to me,” she exclaimed.  “Why?  I have done you no harm!”

“Perhaps not,” I answered, “yet I cannot see what we gain by raking up this miserable history.  It is both painful and profitless.”

“I will say no more,” she declared, with a sudden note of dignity in her tone.  “I can see that I am judged already in your mind.  After all, it does not really matter.  No one likes to be thought worse of than they deserve, and women are all—­a little foolish.  But at least you must answer me one question.  I have the right to ask it.  You must tell me where he is.”

“Where who is?” I asked.

Again her eyes flamed upon inc.  Her lips parted a little, and I could see the white glimmer of her teeth.