“You needn’t be afraid.  I haven’t come to do you harm—­quite the contrary.  May I sit down and talk?” And, holding up the keys, he added:  “Laurence wouldn’t have given me these, would he, if he hadn’t trusted me?”

Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking at a spirit—­a spirit startled out of its flesh.  Nor at the moment did it seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd thought.  He stared round the room—­clean and tawdry, with its tarnished gilt mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered sofa.  Twenty years and more since he had been in such a place.  And he said: 

“Won’t you sit down?  I’m sorry to have startled you.”

But still she did not move, whispering: 

“Who are you, please?”

And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that whisper, he answered: 

“Larry’s brother.”

She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith’s heart, and, still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and sat down on the sofa.  He could see that her feet, thrust into slippers, were bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled eyes, she looked like a tall child.  He drew up a chair and said: 

“You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he’s told me, you see.”  He expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands together on her knees, and said: 

“Yes?”

Then horror and discomfort rose up in him, afresh.

“An awful business!”

Her whisper echoed him: 

“Yes, oh! yes!  Awful—­it is awful!”

And suddenly realising that the man must have fallen dead just where he was sitting, Keith became stock silent, staring at the floor.

“Yes,” she whispered; “Just there.  I see him now always falling!”

How she said that!  With what a strange gentle despair!  In this girl of evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which moved him to a sort of unwilling compassion?

“You look very young,” he said.

“I am twenty.”

“And you are fond of—­my brother?”

“I would die for him.”

Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes, true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first.  It was a very pretty face—­either her life had not eaten into it yet, or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks; or perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry.  He felt strangely at sea, sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the world, professionally used to every side of human nature.  But he said, stammering a little: 

“I—­I have come to see how far you can save him.  Listen, and just answer the questions I put to you.”

She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured: 

“Oh!  I will answer anything.”