“I beg your pardon-” Wimsey recalled himself with a start. “I was dreamin’- puttin’ two and two together, as you might say. So he was along here at the time- the artful beggar. Oh, the coffee. D’you mind if I put this away and have some without sugar?”

“I’m so sorry. Men always seem to take sugar in black coffee. Give it to me-I’ll empty it away.”

“Allow me.” There was no slop-basin on the little table, but Wimsey quickly got up and poured the coffee into the window-box outside. “That’s all right. How about another cup for you?”

“Thank you- I oughtn’t to take it really, it keeps me awake.”

“Just a drop.”

“Oh, well, if you like.” She filled both cups and sat sipping quietly. “Well- that’s all, really, but I thought perhaps I ought to let you know.”

“It was very good of you,” said Wimsey.

They sat talking a little longer- about plays in Town (“I go out very little, you know, it’s better to keep oneself out of the limelight on these occasions”), and books (“I adore Michael Arlen”). Had she read Young Men in Love yet? No- she had ordered it from the library. Wouldn’t Mr. Templeton have something to eat or drink? Really? A brandy? A liqueur?

No thank you. And Mr. Templeton felt he really ought to be slippin’ along now.

“No- don’t go yet- I get so lonely, these long evenings.”

There was a desperate kind of appeal in her voice. Lord Peter sat down again.

She began a rambling and rather confused story about her “friend.” She had given up so much for the friend. And now that her divorce was really coming off, she had a terrible feeling that perhaps the friend was not as affectionate as he used to be. It was very difficult for a woman, and life was very hard.

And so on.

As the minutes passed, Lord became uncomfortably aware that she was watching him. The words tumbled out- hurriedly, yet lifelessly, like a set task, but her eyes were the eyes of a person who expects something. Something alarming, he decided, yet something she was determined to have. It reminded him of a man waiting for an operation- keyed up to it- knowing that it will do him good- yet shrinking from it with all his senses.

He kept up his end of the fatuous conversation. Behind a barrage of small-talk, his mind ran quickly to and fro, analysing the position, getting the range…

Suddenly he became aware that she was trying-clumsily, stupidly and as though in spite of herself- to get him to make love to her.

The fact itself did not strike Wimsey as odd. He was rich enough, well-bred enough, attractive enough and man of the world enough to have received similar invitations fairly often in his thirty-seven years of life. And not always from experienced women. There had been those who sought experience as well as those qualified to bestow it. But so awkward an approach by a woman who admitted to already possessing a husband and a lover was a phenomenon outside his previous knowledge.

Moreover, he felt that the thing would be a nuisance. Mrs. Forrest was handsome enough, but she had not a particle of attraction for him. For all her make-up and her somewhat outspoken costume, she struck him as spinsterish-even epicene. That was the thing which puzzled him during their previous interview. Parker- a young man of rigid virtue and limited wordly knowledge-was not sensitive to these emanations. But Wimsey had felt her as something essentially sexless, even then. And he felt it even more strongly now. Never had he met a woman in whom “the great It,” eloquently hymned by Mrs. Elinor Glyn, was so completely lacking.

Her bare shoulder was against him now, marking his broadcloth with white patches of powder.

Blackmail was the first explanation that occurred to him. The next move would be for the fabulous Mr. Forrest, or someone representing him, to appear suddenly in the doorway, aglow with virtuous wrath and outraged sensibilities.

“A very pretty little trap,” thought Wimsey, adding aloud, “Well, I really must be getting along.”

She caught him by the arm.

“Don’t go.”

There was no caress in the touch-only a kind of desperation.

He thought, “If she really made a practice of this, she would do it better.”

“Truly,” he said, “I oughtn’t to stay any longer. It wouldn’t be safe for you.”

“I’ll risk it.” she said.

A passionate woman might have said it passionately. Or with a brave gaiety. Or challengingly. Or alluringly. Or mysteriously.

She said it grimly. Her fingers dug at his arm.

“Well, damn it all, I’ll risk it,” thought Wimsey. “I must and will know what it’s all about.”

“Poor little woman.” He coaxed into his voice the throaty, fatuous tone of the man who is preparing to make an amorous fool of himself.

He felt her body stiffen as he slipped his arm around her, but she gave a little sigh of relief.

He pulled her suddenly and violently to him and kissed her mouth with a practised exaggeration of passion.

He knew then. No one who has ever encountered it can ever again mistake that awful shrinking, that uncontrollable revulsion of the flesh against a caress that is nauseous. He thought for a moment that she was going to be actually sick.

He released her gently, and stood up- his mind in a whirl, but somehow triumphant. His first instinct had been right, after all.

“That was very naughty of me,” he said, lightly. “You made me forget myself. You will forgive me, won’t you?”

She nodded, shaken.

“And I really must toddle. It’s gettin’ frightfully late and all that. Where’s my hat? Ah, yes, in the hall. Now, good-bye, Mrs. Forrest, an’ take care of yourself. An’ thank you ever so much for telling me about what your friend saw.”

“You are really going?”

She spoke as though she had lost all hope.

“In God’s name,” thought Wimsey, “what does she want? Does she suspect that Mr. Templeton is not everything that he seems? Does she want me to stay the night so that she can get a look at the laundry-mark on my shirt? Should I suddenly save the situation for her by offering her Lord Peter Wimsey’s visiting-card?”

His brain toyed freakishly with the thought as he babbled his way to the door. She let him go without further words.

As he stepped into the hall he turned and looked at her. She stood in the middle of the room, watching him, and on her face was such a fury of fear and rage as turned his blood to water.

Miss Whittaker and the youngest Miss Findlater had returned from their expedition. Miss Climpson, most faithful of sleuths, and carrying Lord Peter’s letter of instructions in the pocket of her skirt like a talisman, had asked the youngest Miss Findlater to tea.

As a matter of fact, Miss Climpson had become genuinely interested in the girl. Silly affectation and gush, and a parrot-repetition of the shibboleths of the modern school were symptoms that the experienced spinster well understood. They indicated, she thought, a real unhappiness, a real dissatisfaction with the narrowness of life in a country town. And besides this, Miss Climpson felt sure that Vera Findlater was being “preyed upon,” as she expressed it to herself, by the handsome Mary Whittaker. “It would be a mercy for the girl,” thought Miss Climpson, “if she could form a genuine attachment to a young man. It is natural for a schoolgirl to be schwärmerisch- in a young woman of twenty-two it is thoroughly undesirable. That Whittaker woman encourages it- she would, of course. She likes to have someone to admire her and run her errands. And she prefers it to be a stupid person, who will not compete with her. If Mary Whittaker were to marry, she would marry a rabbit.” (Miss Climpson’s active mind quickly conjured up a picture of the rabbit- fair-haired and a little paunchy, with a habit of saying, “I’ll ask the wife.” Miss Climpson wondered why Providence saw fit to create such men. For Miss Climpson, men were intended to be masterful, even though wicked or foolish. She was a spinster made and not born- a perfectly womanly woman.)