‘I was looking for my letters.’ The words were out before she had tried them over; and because the act belonged to her lost-memory time and she had pretended to him that her memory had returned some while ago, she felt that it was a slip and was discomfited. To cover the slip, she said:

‘I thought – in fact, I hoped – that my post was being sent on with my books. You see I haven’t . . .’

‘How remiss of me! I should have told you at once. . . .’ He reached for his wallet and then withdrew his hand. ‘No, I know; it is on my desk. A letter – not for you, but about you – from Miss Rose Tilbury.’ His voice took on a light, teasing quality. ‘I don’t think you should complain of not receiving letters; apparently you don’t write them. Or not often enough. Miss Tilbury wrote to me because, she said, she had had a letter from you, sent from hospital in July, and since then no news at all.’

And it was true, that having had no reply to the letter in which she had announced her accident, she had not dared to write again. Only within the last ten minutes she had been certain that Rose was still alive – or, at least, had been alive as lately as the June of this year.

‘Did she say whether she had written to me?’

‘Yes. Twice, I think she said.’

‘I never received a letter from her, either in the hospital or at Barnhurst.’

‘I expect the hospital was to blame. They’re gathering dust somewhere, awaiting someone’s attention, I expect. I’ll make some inquiries. Anyway, I wrote your friend a reassuring letter. I told her you had made a good recovery and that we were taking care of you.’

What more had he said? She must write to Rose the first thing she did.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll look in tomorrow, probably around six, and see how you are getting on.’

When he had gone she put her head in her hands and tried to think calmly. She was in a perilous position. So perilous that if her memory and her knowledge of the situation which it brought with it had come to her even as she put the key into the door, she would have obeyed her impulse to turn and flee. It was impossible that she should be allowed to come back here and live unmolested. The moment the Canon had recovered from his surprise at seeing her, he would begin to think things over, and he would never believe that she had recanted. They’d get her, as they had poor Wesley Baines.