HELLIER returned, slowly and sadly, to the High Street.

Assured in his own mind that Klein inhabited the house in St Ann’s Road, hopeless of any help from Freyberger, whom he had put down as a self-conceited man of not very luminous intelligence, he had undertaken the desperate venture of going himself to the house, tackling the occupant if he were at home, and if he were absent exploring the place.

He had provided himself with a powerful chisel to prise the verandah door open. He had not to use it, however, for, as we have seen, the door was only held by the catch.

It had been an expedition requiring a very great deal of pluck, considering the appalling man with whom he would have had to contend had his suspicions been correct. And it had ended in such a miserable fiasco!

When he had lain on the floor of the passage with Freyberger on top of him, he imagined that his last moment had come. He had not even cried out for help, knowing that before help could arrive he would be dead.

He had not come badly out of the business, yet he felt depressed with a miserable sense of failure.

It was striking nine when he passed the High Street, Kensington, Station; just at the entry a flower-seller, with a basket of early roses and Nice violets, caught his eye. He bought a great bunch, and, calling a passing cab, ordered the driver to take him to the Langham.

Violets were Cécile Lefarge’s favourite flowers.

Love may be a liar, love may be blind, love may be anything you please, but, whatever else he may be, love is a courtier. No frilled marquess of the old regime, by long study, ever knew his monarch’s predilections as a lover by instinct knows the predilections of his mistress.

Hellier bought violets instead of roses, instinctively and not from choice.

At the Langham he found that Mademoiselle Lefarge was in, and a few moments later he was in her presence.

She advanced to meet him, with hand outstretched.

“I have brought you these,” he said, sinking into a chair, whilst she took a seat near him, “and some news—bad news, I am afraid.”

“I am used to that,” replied she, “but any news coming from you can not be entirely bad. You, who have done so much and thought so much for me.”

“I wish I could have done more,” he replied. Then he told her the events of the day, suppressing nothing, altering nothing.

She listened to him attentively. When he had finished she said:

“Is that all?”

“I think,” he said, “I have told you a good deal. I wish I could have told you less, or more.”

“It is a good deal,” she replied. “And you went, alone and unarmed, to face that fearful man?”

“Yes, and you see the result. I have spoiled everything.”

“You have not spoiled my regard for you,” she replied. “You are very brave, and you know, or perhaps you do not know, how a woman can admire bravery in a man.............