Richard was watching her. His glance, shy, furtive, kept coming and going. She noticed nothing. She was beyond noticing.

‘It went off quite all right, eh?’

‘I’ve told you so.’

‘You’re sure they were the right papers? Did you look?’

‘No.’

‘But then–’

‘I’m sure, I tell you. Don’t bother me, Richard. I can’t bear any more tonight.’

Richard shifted nervously.

‘No, no. I see.’

He fidgeted about the room. Presently he came over to her, laid a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off.

‘Don’t touch me.’ She tried to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Richard. My nerves are on edge. I feel I can’t bear to be touched.’

‘I know. I understand.’

Again he wandered up and down.

‘Theo,’ he burst out suddenly. ‘I’m damned sorry.’

‘What?’ She looked up, vaguely startled.

‘I oughtn’t to have let you go there at this time of night. I never dreamed that you’d be subjected to any–unpleasantness.’

‘Unpleasantness?’ She laughed. The word seemed to amuse her. ‘You don’t know! Oh, Richard, you don’t know!’

‘I don’t know what?’

She said very gravely, looking straight in front of her: ‘What this night has cost me.’

‘My God! Theo! I never meant–You–you did that, for me? The swine! Theo–Theo–I couldn’t have known. I couldn’t have guessed. My God!’

He was kneeling by her now stammering, his arms round her, and she turned and looked at him with faint surprise, as though his words had at last really penetrated to her attention.

‘I–I never meant–’

‘You never meant what, Richard?’

Her voice startled him.

‘Tell me. What was it that you never meant?’

‘Theo, don’t let us speak of it. I don’t want to know. I want never to think of it.’

She was staring at him, wide awake now, with every faculty alert. Her words came clear and distinct:

‘You never meant–What do you think happened?’

‘It didn’t happen, Theo. Let’s say it didn’t happen.’

And still she stared, till the truth began to come to her.

‘You think that–’

‘I don’t want–’

She interrupted him: ‘You think that Vincent Easton asked a price for those letters? You think that I–paid him?’

Richard said weakly and unconvincingly: ‘I–I never dreamed he was that kind of man.’

V

‘Didn’t you?’ She looked at him searchingly. His eyes fell before hers. ‘Why did you ask me to put on this dress this evening? Why did you send me there alone at this time of night? You guessed he–cared for me. You wanted to save your skin–save it at any cost–even at the cost of my honour.’ She got up.

‘I see now. You meant that from the beginning–or at least you saw it as a possibility, and it didn’t deter you.’

‘Theo–’