I was honoured only last week, as a representative of _The Tatler_, with the confidence of Guy Walsingham, the brilliant author of 'Obsessions.' She pronounced herself thoroughly pleased with my sketch of her method; she went so far as to say that I had made her genius more comprehensible even to herself." Neil Paraday had dropped on the garden-bench and sat there at once detached and confounded; he looked hard at a bare spot in the lawn, as if with an anxiety that had suddenly made him grave.

His movement had been interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically into a wicker chair that stood hard by, and while Mr.Morrow so settled himself I felt he had taken official possession and that there was no undoing it.

One had heard of unfortunate people's having "a man in the house," and this was just what we had.

There was a silence of a moment, during which we seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible the presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and my thought, as I was sure Paraday's was doing, performed within the minute a great distant revolution.

I saw just how emphatic I should make my rejoinder to Mr.Pinhorn, and that having come, like Mr.Morrow, to betray, I must remain as long as possible to save.