"Miss Merville, at Morelle's suggestion, told you that she had been to a ball at Albert Hall. I can prove that she was never at the Albert Hall that night. I feel it is my duty to tell you this, and I expect you to inform Mr. Steppe, who, I understand, is engaged to your daughter." "How did he know?" Beryl shook her head wearily. "Ronald told him--about the ball. When the elevator was going down, the morning I left the flat, I saw a man walking up the stairs. He must have seen me. Ronnie told me the night before that Jeremiah Talbot was coming to breakfast with him. I just saw him as the lift passed him--he had stopped on the landing below Ronnie's and probably recognized me. Christina, what am I to do? Father mustn't know. It seems ever so much more important to me now." "When do you marry, Beryl?" "The day after tomorrow. I know Ronnie has quarreled with this man. I read that story in the newspapers. It was splendid of Ronnie, splendid. It was a revelation to me." Christina bit her lip in thought. "I will see Ronnie--tonight. No, I will go alone. I have been resting all day. You must go home. Have you brought your car? Good. I will borrow it. Give me the letter." Beryl protested, but the girl was firm. "You must not go--perhaps I am wrong about Ronnie, but I don't think so. Sir John Maxton has the same mad dream." "What do you mean?" Christina smiled. "One day I will tell you." The vision of her daughter dressed for going out temporarily deprived Mrs. Colebrook of speech. Before she could frame adequate comment, Christina was gone. She dropped Beryl at her house and drove to Knightsbridge. The porter was not sure whether Mr. Morelle was in or out. It was his duty to be uncertain. He took her up to Ronnie's floor and waited until the door opened. "My dear, what brings you here at this hour?" He had been out, he told her. A Royal Society lecture on Einstein's Theory had been absorbing. He was so full of the subject, so alive, so boyish in his interest that for a while he forgot the hour and the obvious urgency of her call. "I love lectures," he laughed, "but you know that. Do you remember how I was so late last night that your mother locked me out--no, not your mother--it must have been François." He frowned heavily. "How curious that I should confuse François with your dear mother." She listened eagerly, delightedly, forgetting, too, the matter that brought her. The phenomenon had no terror for her, tremendous though it was. He was the first to recall himself to the present. "From Beryl?" he said quickly, "what is wrong?" She handed him the letter and he read it carefully. "How terrible!" he said in a hushed voice, "how appallingly terrible! He says she is marrying Steppe! That can't be true, either. It would be grotesque--"