‘I want to see Miss Nancarrow,’ Luke said to him in a low voice.  ‘Will you please knock at her door?  I must see her.’

Totty came down immediately.  She had her hat on and a shawl thrown about her.

‘What ever is it?’ she asked.

‘Just come a little way off, Totty; I want to speak to you.’

She accompanied him to the dark side of the street, and, having got her there, he could find no fitting word with which to begin.  He had no intention of telling her what he had heard and what he had discovered for himself, but she was a close friend of Thyrza’s and might know or suspect something; moreover, she was a good girl, a girl thoroughly to be trusted, he felt sure of her.  Perhaps a hint would be enough to induce her to share a secret with him, when she understood what his suspicions pointed to.

‘Totty—­’

‘Yes, you frighten me.  What is it?’

‘Have you seen Thyrza Trent lately?’

‘Why?’

She tried to read his face through the darkness.  Her yesterday’s conversation with Thyrza was vivid in her mind.  Suspicion was irritated at the sound of Thyrza’s name on Luke’s tongue.

‘Totty, I want to ask you something.’  He spoke with deepest earnestness, taking her hand.  ’You won’t keep anything from me, now?  I want to know if Thyrza has talked to you about—­about her marriage.’

‘Why do you want to know that?’ the girl asked, in a hard voice.

’I’ll speak plainer, Totty.  Be a good girl, Totty dear!  Tell me what I want to know!  Has she ever said anything to make you think that—­ that she liked any one better than Grail?’

What a coil was here!  She had pulled her hand away, furious with him for his shamelessness.  Yet self-respect did not allow her to speak vehemently.

‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘you’d better go and ask her.’

He hung in doubt.  Totty added, with more show of feeling: 

’Thyrza Trent’s a little fool.  You may tell her I said so, if you like.  If you know all about it, what do you come bothering me for at this time o’ night?  I’m not going to be mixed up in such things, so I tell you!  And there’s an end of it!’

She left him.  He stood and saw her re-enter the house.

Then is was true.  ‘If you know all about it,’ . . .  ’I’m not going to be mixed up in such things.’ . . .  Totty had been told, either by Thyrza herself or by someone already spreading the story.  The story was true.

He was struck with weakness.  Sweat broke out from all his body.  Nothing he had ever heard had seemed to him so terrible.  A girl like Thyrza!  He had held her honesty as sure as the rising of day out of night.

Half an hour later he sat in his bedroom writing: 

’Dear Miss Trent,—­I want very much to see you.  I will wait in Kennington Road, opposite the end of your street, from eight o’clock to-morrow night (Wednesday).  Please do come.  I must see you, and I wish no one to know of our meeting.  ’Yours truly,