“Yes, I remember perfectly well.  It was after Mr. Jones, the missionary, had been giving us a lecture on what he called ’Pitfalls in the East.’”

“Well, now I warn you that I’m going to be officious and interfering.  I have a notion that you are in some difficulty.  What Mrs. Milward said in joke I repeat in deadly earnest.  If you are in any sort of hole, let me lend a hand.”

“But why should you imagine that I am in any difficulty or, as you call it, ’a hole’?”

Sophy tried to carry it off gaily, but her eyes fell.

“Because you look so changed and depressed and seem to have lost your spirits.  Perhaps, as you have no bodily ailment, there is something on your mind?”

“And who can minister to a mind diseased?” she quoted with a smile.  “No, I’m really normal and absolutely sane.”

“I wish you wouldn’t put me off,” he protested; “I know there is something.”

“Even if there were, do you expect me to make you my Father Confessor?”

“No, indeed; but I do think you might give us a hint—­I mean your friends—­of what it is that has come between us.”

For a moment she found it difficult to answer.  At last she said: 

“Well, there is something, I admit; something that claims all my time.  I am sorry I cannot tell you more, for it is not my own secret.”

“I see—­it belongs to another.”

Evidently Sophy had discovered the truth at last—­a truth that was withering her youth and crushing her to the earth.  His quick eye understood the signs of strain and fatigue; all life and light had faded from her face, and he realised that she was, as Fuchsia had described, “terribly changed.”

For a moment neither of them spoke; she fidgeted with a turquoise ring—­it was much too loose, or her fingers were much too thin, for it suddenly slipped, dropped into her lap and then rolled far away upon the floor with an air of impudent independence.

Shafto, as he searched for and picked up this ring, felt something forcing and driving him to speak and, after a moment’s reflection, he made up his mind to dare all.

“I believe I know your secret,” was his bold announcement, as he restored her property.

“You!” she ejaculated.  “That is impossible.”

“At least, I can guess,” he said, dropping his voice.

Then he got up and, standing before her with his hands in his pockets, looked down at her steadily and continued: 

“It has to do with a drug.”

At the word drug she winced visibly, and her pale face changed.

“The drug is cocaine,” he went on slowly, “and the victim is—­a lady in this house.”

Sophy’s white cheeks were now aflame; bright tears stood in her eyes; she was passing through a painful crisis.  To assent would amount to a betrayal.  Should she put him off with a lie?  There seemed to be an interminable pause before she spoke.