The same sort of panic he had known that night at the club, when he heard his own death announced by Denby, welled up in him again, so that he beat frantically against the invisible barriers of his own helplessness. Anything could happen to Sabrina now, and he was powerless even to catch her tears on his lips. It set him pacing the floor, at grips once more with immensities no man should have to face. Sabrina, setting out alone into the world again, lost, betrayed, and bewildered. And he had to let her go. There was no way to keep her here, and he had no right to try. Oh, God, keep her safe—you meant her to be safe....

He heard her feet on the stairs.

An early morning reconnaissance had shown him that departure was imminent, but he was not quite prepared for her stricken look and feverish eyes, now that she stood leaning against the closed door as though she had no strength left to stand alone.

“But you haven’t lost me, you know,” he told her reasonably, like a man who puts aside his own anxieties to soothe a sick child. “I’ve been reading luggage labels, I know exactly where you’ll be in London. I’ll keep track of things, always. We won’t end like this. I don’t know yet what happens, but this isn’t the end, you can be sure of that—”

White-faced, silent, gallant in her tearlessness, she came on into the room and, starting at the mantelpiece, began to tend it for the last time; picked a fallen rose petal from beneath the vase on the mantelshelf—with her handkerchief wiped an imaginary speck of dust from a silver candlestick—straightened the silk cushion in the chair where the book about ghosts had lain—adjusted a fold of the curtain beside the sunny window seat where Muffin loved to lie—cast a critical eye over the immaculate polished surface of the desk, setting the blotter true by the fraction of an inch—touched lightly with a caress one of the sphinx book-ends he had thought highly of— moved on into the bedroom end and paused at the tall chest of drawers to face Alice’s picture neatly into the room again as it had been in the beginning. And as she turned away towards the bedside table her eyes fell on the collar box beside the silver frame.

The collar box.

Her mind flew back to the day of the treasure hunt, when the loose catch had first tempted her exploring fingers—winged collars for evening wear—and in the center space something small and black and cold, like a snake.

“Sabrina,” said Hilary apprehensively, watching from across the room.