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She smiled deprecatingly. 'Well, I couldn't remember if you had spoken my name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at the Iretons', you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during those few days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I began to feel that you wouldn't let me, that you would slip away from the subject if I approached it. Wasn't I right? Tell me, please.' He nodded. 'But why?' He remained silent.

'Well,' she said, 'I will finish what I had to say, and then you will tell me, I hope, why you had to make it so hard. When I began to understand that you wouldn't let me talk of the matter to you, it made me more determined than ever. I suppose you didn't realize that I would insist on speaking even if you were quite discouraging. I dare say I couldn't have done it if I had been guilty, as you thought. You walked into my parlour today, never thinking I should dare. Well, now you see.'

Mrs Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy. She had, as she was wont to say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardour of her purpose to annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so long she felt herself mistress of the situation.

'I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made,' she continued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked at her enigmatically. 'You will have to believe it, Mr Trent; it is utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things and cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that nobody thinks twice about taking for facts. Please understand that I don't blame you in the least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did. You knew that I was estranged from my husband, and you knew what that so often means. You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up an injured attitude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explain it away. I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myself at first, before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he was disappointed in me because I couldn't take a brilliant lead in society. Well, that was true; he was so. But I could see you weren't convinced. You had guessed what it took me much longer to see, because I knew how irrational it was. Yes; my husband was jealous of John Marlowe; you divined that.

'Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; it was such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the humiliation and strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died with him. You practically asked me if my husband's secretary was not my lover, Mr Trent--I have to say it, because I want you to understand why I broke down and made a scene. You took that for a confession; you thought I was guilty of that, and I think you even thought I might be a party to the crime, that I had consented .... That did hurt me; but perhaps you couldn't have thought anything else--I don't know.'

Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head at the words. He did not raise it again as she continued. 'But really it was simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory of all the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulled myself together again you had gone.'

She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer, and drew out a long, sealed envelope.

'This is the manuscript you left with me,' she said. 'I have read it through again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at your cleverness in things of this kind.' A faintly mischievous smile flashed upon her face, and was gone. I thought it was splendid, Mr Trent--I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested. And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank you for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph of yours rather than put a woman's reputation in peril. If all had been as you supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up the case you put in their hands. Believe