“Yes, madam, except this one. Mr. Derrick told me to leave that to him.”

She disappeared. Derrick laughed and lit his pipe.

“You’re answered now, Edith! The house closed tight as a drum, and the only access from outside through this room.”

“Perhaps you’re right! Yes, of course you are; but, when she comes back, say something that will keep her for a minute; say anything at all. Please do that. I can’t explain, but I must hear some other voice, even Perkins’s comfortless accents. Jack, I am a fool.”

“You’re not very complimentary to my powers of entertainment,” he chuckled. “I won’t write any more to-night. We’ll get out the cards if you like.”

She shook her head and sent him a strange glance, as though wondering if he would understand. “It isn’t entertainment I want to-night.”

“Then what? I’m not in a position to offer much more.”

“I don’t know. It’s something like protection, but not quite that, either. I know it sounds absurd, but it’s the kind of thing that could only come from one who does not believe what you do about all this.” She made a gesture at the surrounding room. “I suppose it’s a sort of companion in my incredulity. You’re beginning to make things rather too much alive for my comfort, though I don’t believe in them at all.”

“There’s nothing here,” he protested quickly, “nothing but ourselves. Forget what I said. I was only dreaming aloud. It’s what the Scotch call havering.”

Even as he spoke there came to him the refutation of his own words. Millicent signaled his disapproval from the canvas overhead, and stinging whispers from the silence around proclaimed him false to his real belief. The protest died on his lips, and Edith looked at him keenly.

“I don’t want you to say what you don’t believe in the hope of stiffening me, but I’d be glad if you’d help to prevent my believing it, too. I don’t want to, and I don’t intend to. I’m tremendously in earnest about all this. The reason is that I know I haven’t got the right kind of mental machinery. It would break me all up, while on the contrary it is perfectly natural for you. All I want to do is to carry on here in the ordinary way and make it as easy as possible for you to work. That’s a woman’s job, Jack, and I’m satisfied with it and don’t want to go beyond it. If there’s anything that you’re forced to tell me, 

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