I thought her reply to the second word, “green,” was curious.  It came quickly, “Envy.”

However, I shall not attempt to give all the replies, but merely some of the most significant.  There did not seem to be any hesitation about most of the words, but whenever Kennedy tried to question her about a word that seemed to him interesting she made either evasive or hesitating answers, until it became evident that in the back of her head was some idea which she was repressing and concealing from us, something that she set off with a mental “No Thoroughfare.”

He had finished going through the list, and Kennedy was now studying over the answers and comparing the time records.

“Now,” he said at length, running his eye over the words again, “I want to repeat the performance.  Try to remember and duplicate your first replies,” he said.

Again we went through what at first had seemed to me to be a solemn farce, but which I began to see was quite important.  Sometimes she would repeat the answer exactly as before.  At other times a new word would occur to her.  Kennedy was keen to note all the differences in the two lists.

One which I recall because the incident made an impression on me had to do with the trio, “Death—­life—­inevitable.”  “Why that?” he asked casually.

“Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ’One should let nothing which one can have escape, even if a little wrong is done; no opportunity should be missed; life is so short, death inevitable’?”

There were several others which to Kennedy seemed more important, but long after we had finished I pondered this answer.  Was that her philosophy of life?  Undoubtedly she would never have remembered the phrase if it had not been so, at least in a measure.

She had begun to show signs of weariness, and Kennedy quickly brought the conversation around to subjects of apparently a general nature, but skillfully contrived so as to lead the way along lines her answers had indicated.

Kennedy had risen to go, still chatting.  Almost unintentionally he picked up from a dressing table a bottle of white tablets, without a label, shaking it to emphasize an entirely, and I believe purposely, irrelevant remark.

“By the way,” he said, breaking off naturally, “what is that?”

“Only something Dr. Maudsley had prescribed for me,” she answered quickly.

As he replaced the bottle and went on with the thread of the conversation, I saw that in shaking the bottle he had abstracted a couple of the tablets before she realized it.  “I can’t tell you just what to do without thinking the case over,” he concluded, rising to go.  “Yours is a peculiar case, Miss Haversham, baffling.  I’ll have to study it over, perhaps ask Dr. Maudsley If I may see you again.  Meanwhile, I am sure what he is doing is the correct thing.”

Inasmuch as she had said nothing about what Dr. Maudsley was doing, I wondered whether there was not just a trace of suspicion in her glance at him from under her long dark lashes.