“I did go into your room. I went there to say to you what I said just now. But you weren’t there. And when I saw the mess on the floor I thought-I was afraid you’d think-”

“I did think.”

“What did he think?”

“Lord Peter? I don’t know what he thought. But he’ll probably think something now.”

“You’ve no evidence that I did it,” said Miss Hillyard, with sudden spirit. “Only that I was in the room. It was done when I got there. I saw it, I went to look at it. You can tell your lover that I saw it and was glad to see it. But he’ll tell you that’s no proof that I did it.”

“Look here, Miss Hillyard,” said Harriet, divided between anger, suspicion and a dreadful kind of pity, “You must understand, once and for all, that he is not my lover. Do you really imagine that if he were, we should-” here her sense of the ludicrous overcame her and made it difficult to control her voice-“we should come and misbehave ourselves in the greatest possible discomfort at Shrewsbury? Even if I had no respect for the College-where would be the point of it? With all the world and all the time there is at our disposal, why on earth should we come and play the fool down here? It would be silly. And if you really were down there in the quad just now, you must know that people who are lovers don’t treat each other like that. At least,” she added rather unkindly, “if you knew anything about it at all, you’d know that. We’re very old friends, and I owe him a great deal-”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the tutor roughly. “You know you’re in love with the man.”

“By God!” said Harriet, suddenly enlightened, “if I’m not, I know who is.”

“You’ve no right to say that!”

“It’s true, all the same”, said Harriet. “Oh, damn! I suppose it’s no good my saying I’m frightfully sorry.” (Dynamite in a powder factory? Yes, indeed, Miss Edwards, you saw it before anybody else. Biologically interesting!) “This kind of thing is the devil and all.” (“That’s the devil of a complication,” Peter had said. He’d seen it, of course. Must have. Too much experience not to. Probably happened scores of times-scores of women-all over Europe. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! And was that a random accusation, or had Miss Hillyard been delving into the past and digging up Viennese singers?)

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Miss Hillyard, “go away!”

“I think I’d better,” said Harriet.

She did not know how to deal with the situation at all. She could no longer feel outraged or angry. She was not alarmed. She was not jealous. She was only sorry, and quite incapable of expressing any sympathy which would not be an insult. She realized that she was still clutching Miss Hillyard’s slipper. Had she better give it back? It was evidence-of something. But of what7 The whole business of the Poltergeist seemed to have retreated over the horizon, leaving behind it the tormented shell of a woman staring blindly into vacancy under the cruel harshness of the electric light. Harriet picked up the other fragment of ivory from under the writing table-the little spearhead from a red pawn.

Well, whatever one’s personal feelings, evidence was evidence. Peter-she remembered that Peter had said he would ring up from the Mitre. She went downstairs with the slipper in her hand, and in the New Quad ran into Mrs. Padgett, who was just coming to look for her.

The call was switched through to the box in Queen Elizabeth.

“It’s not so bad after all,” said Peter’s voice. “It’s only the Grand Panjandrum wanting a conference at his private house. Sort of Pleasant Sunday Afternoon in Wild Warwickshire. It may mean London or Rome after that but we’ll hope not. At any rate, it’ll do if I’m there by half-past eleven, so I’ll pop round and see you about nine.”

“Please do. Something’s happened. Not alarming, but upsetting. I can’t tell you on the ’phone.”

He again promised to come, and said good-night. Harriet, after locking the slipper and the piece of ivory carefully away, went to the Bursar, and was accommodated with a bed in the Infirmary.

Harriet left word at the Lodge that she would wait for Lord Peter Wimsey in the Fellows’ Garden. She had breakfasted early, thus avoiding Miss Hillyard, who passed through the New Quad like an angry shadow while she was talking to Padgett.

She had first met Peter at a moment when every physical feeling had been battered out of her by the brutality of circumstance; by this accident she had been aware of him from the beginning as a mind and spirit localized in a body. Never-not even in those later dizzying moments on the river-had she considered him primarily as a male animal, or calculated the promise implicit in the veiled eyes, the long, flexible mouth, the curiously vital hands. Nor, since of her he had always asked and never demanded, had she felt in him any domination but that of intellect. But now, as he advanced towards her along the flower-bordered path, she saw him with new eyes-the eyes of women who had seen him before they knew him-saw him, as they saw him, dynamically. Miss Hillyard, Miss Edwards, Miss de Vine, the Dean even, each in her own way had recognized the same thing: six centuries of possessiveness, fastened under the yoke of urbanity. She herself, seeing it impudent and uncontrolled in the nephew, had known it instantly for what it was; it astonished her that in the older man she should have been blind to it so long and should still retain so strong a defence against it. And she wondered whether it was only accident that had sealed her eyes till it was too late for realization to bring disaster.

She sat still where she was till he stood looking down at her.

“Well?” he said, lightly, “how doth my lady? What, sweeting, all amort?… Yes, something has happened; I see it has. What is it, domina?”

Though the tone was half-jesting, nothing could have reassured her like that grave, academic title. She said, as though she were reciting a lesson: “When you left last night, Miss Hillyard met me in the New Quad. She asked me to come up to her room because she wanted to speak to me. On the way up, I saw there was a little piece of white ivory stuck on the heel of her slipper. She-made some rather unpleasant accusations; she had misunderstood the position-”

“That can and shall be put right. Did you say anything about the slipper?”

“I’m afraid I did. There was another bit of ivory on the floor. I accused her of having gone into my room, and she denied it till I showed her the evidence. Then she admitted it; but she said the damage was already done when she got there.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I might have done… if… if she hadn’t shown me a motive.”

“I see. All right. You needn’t tell me.”

She looked up for the first time into a face as bleak as winter, and faltered: “I brought the slipper away with me. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Are you going to be afraid of the facts?” he said. “And you a scholar?”

“I don’t think I did it in malice. I hope not. But I was bitterly unkind to her.”

“Happily,” said he, “a fact is a fact, and your state of mind won’t alter it by a hair’s breadth. Let’s go now and have the truth at all hazards.”

She led him up to her room, where the morning sun cast a long rectangle of brilliance across the ruin on the floor. From the chest near the door she took out the slipper and handed it to him. He lay down flat, squinting sideways along the carpet in the place where neither he nor she had trodden the night before. His hand went to his pocket, and he smiled up sideways into her troubled face.