Cairn stepped out of the lift, crossed the hall, and was about to walk out on to Piccadilly, when he stopped, staring hard at a taxi-cab which had slowed down upon the opposite side whilst the driver awaited a suitable opportunity to pull across. The occupant of the cab was invisible now, but a moment before Cairn had had a glimpse of her as she glanced out, apparently towards the very doorway in which he stood. Perhaps his imagination was playing him tricks. He stood and waited, until at last the cab drew up within a few yards of him. Myra Duquesne got out. Having paid the cabman, she crossed the pavement and entered the hall-way. Cairn stepped forward so that she almost ran into his arms. "Mr. Cairn!" she cried. "Why! have you been to see Antony?" "I have," he replied, and paused, at a loss for words. It had suddenly occurred to him that Antony Ferrara and Myra Duquesne had known one another from childhood; that the girl probably regarded Ferrara in the light of a brother. "There are so many things I want to talk to him about," she said. "He seems to know everything, and I am afraid I know very little." Cairn noted with dismay the shadows under her eyes--the grey eyes that he would have wished to see ever full of light and laughter. She was pale, too, or seemed unusually so in her black dress; but the tragic death of her guardian, Sir Michael Ferrara, had been a dreadful blow to this convent-bred girl who had no other kin in the world. A longing swept into Cairn's heart and set it ablaze; a longing to take all her sorrows, all her cares, upon his own broad shoulders, to take her and hold her, shielded from whatever of trouble or menace the future might bring. "Have you seen his rooms here?" he asked, trying to speak casually; but his soul was up in arms against the bare idea of this girl's entering that perfumed place where abominable and vile things were, and none of them so vile as the man she trusted, whom she counted a brother. "Not yet," she answered, with a sort of childish glee momentarily lighting her eyes. "Are they _very_ splendid?" "Very," he answered her, grimly. "Can't you come in with me for awhile? Only just a little while, then you can come home to lunch--you and Antony." Her eyes sparkled now. "Oh, do say yes!" Knowing what he did know of the man upstairs, he longed to accompany her; yet, contradictorily, knowing what he did he could not face him again, could not submit himself to the test of being civil to Antony Ferrara in the presence of Myra Duquesne. "Please don't tempt me," he begged, and forced a smile. "I shall find myself enrolled amongst the seekers of soup-tickets if I _completely_ ignore the claims of my employer upon my time!" "Oh, what a shame!" she cried. Their eyes met, and something--something unspoken but cogent--passed between them; so that for the first time a pretty colour tinted the girl's cheeks. She suddenly grew embarrassed.