She shook her head, looking at him intently, with those mournfully true eyes.  And he felt a sort of shame.

“I was obliged to ask.  Do you know where he lives?”

“Yes.”

“You must not go there.  And he must not come to you, here.”

Her lips quivered; but she bowed her head.  Suddenly he found her quite close to him, speaking almost in a whisper: 

“Please do not take him from me altogether.  I will be so careful.  I will not do anything to hurt him; but if I cannot see him sometimes, I shall die.  Please do not take him from me.”  And catching his hand between her own, she pressed it desperately.  It was several seconds before Keith said: 

“Leave that to me.  I will see him.  I shall arrange.  You must leave that to me.”

“But you will be kind?”

He felt her lips kissing his hand.  And the soft moist touch sent a queer feeling through him, protective, yet just a little brutal, having in it a shiver of sensuality.  He withdrew his hand.  And as if warned that she had been too pressing, she recoiled humbly.  But suddenly she turned, and stood absolutely rigid; then almost inaudibly whispered:  “Listen!  Someone out—­out there!” And darting past him she turned out the light.

Almost at once came a knock on the door.  He could feel—­actually feel the terror of this girl beside him in the dark.  And he, too, felt terror.  Who could it be?  No one came but Larry, she had said.  Who else then could it be?  Again came the knock, louder!  He felt the breath of her whisper on his cheek:  “If it is Larry!  I must open.”  He shrank back against the wall; heard her open the door and say faintly:  “Yes.  Please!  Who?”

Light painted a thin moving line on the wall opposite, and a voice which Keith recognised answered: 

“All right, miss.  Your outer door’s open here.  You ought to keep it shut after dark.”

God!  That policeman!  And it had been his own doing, not shutting the outer door behind him when he came in.  He heard her say timidly in her foreign voice:  “Thank you, sir!” the policeman’s retreating steps, the outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again.  That something in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he could not see her.  They were all the same, these women; could not speak the truth!  And he said brusquely: 

“You told me they didn’t know you!”

Her voice answered like a sigh: 

“I did not think they did, sir.  It is so long I was not out in the town, not since I had Larry.”

The repulsion which all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at those words.  His brother—­son of his mother, a gentleman—­the property of this girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this unspeakable event!  But she had turned up the light.  Had she some intuition that darkness was against her?  Yes, she was pretty with that soft face, colourless save for its lips and dark eyes, with that face somehow so touchingly, so unaccountably good, and like a child’s.