'But vivid as were the pictures that Sinfi gave me of your search for me, I could not piece them together in a plain tale. I tried to do so; it was impossible. What had happened to me after I had become unconscious on the sands in that unaccountable way--why I was found in Wales--how I could possibly have got there without knowing about it--what had led to my being discovered by Mr. D'Arcy--discovered in London, above all places, and in a painter's studio--these questions were with me night and day, and Sinfi was entirely unable to tell me anything about the matter, unless, as I sometimes half-thought, she was concealing something from me.' 'How could you have suspicions of poor Sinfi?' I said, for I was becoming alarmed at the way in which these inquiries were absorbing Winnie's mind. 'It is, I know, Henry, a peculiarity of my nature to be extremely confiding until I have once been deceived, and then to be just as suspicious. Kind as Mr. D'Arcy has been to me, I began to feel restless in his haven of refuge. I think that he perceived it, for I often found his eyes fixed upon me with a somewhat inquiring and anxious expression in them. I felt that I must leave him and go out into the world and take my place in the battle of life.' 'But, Winnie,' I said, 'you don't say that you intended to come to me. Battle of life, indeed! Where should Winnie stand in that battle except by the side of Henry? You knew now where to find me. Sinfi, of course, told you that I was in Wales. And you did not even write to me! What can it mean?' 'Why, Henry, don't you know what it means? Don't you know that the newspapers were full of long paragraphs about the heir of the Aylwins having left his famous bungalow and gone to Japan? Why, it was actually copied into the little penny weekly thing that Mrs. Titwing takes in, and it was there that I read it.' 'This shows the folly of ignoring the papers,' I said. 'I did undoubtedly say in some letters to friends that I proposed going to Japan; but my loss of you, my grief, my misery, paralysed every faculty of mine. My strength of purpose was all gone. I delayed and delayed starting, and never left Wales at all, as you see.' 'Two things,' continued Winnie, 'prevented my leaving Hurstcote--my promise to Mr. D'Arcy to sit to him for his picture of Zenelophon, and the prosaic fact that I had not money in my pocket to travel with; for it was part of the delicate method of Mr. D'Arcy to furnish me with everything money could buy, but to give me no money. His extravagant expenditure upon me in the way of dress, trinkets, and every kind of luxury that could be placed in my room by Mrs. Titwing appalled me. Mrs. Titwing's own bearing, when I spoke to her about them, would have made one almost suppose that they grew there like mushrooms; and if I mentioned them to Mr. D'Arcy he would tell me that Mrs. Titwing was answerable for all that; he knew nothing about such matters.