The hoarse voice ceased, the sound of footsteps died away; Granter was alone. The smile still clung to his lips, but he was not amused; he was annoyed with the measured indignation of a big man highly civilised and innocent. Where had this ruffian sprung from? To be spied on, without knowing it, like this! His ears grew red. The damned scoundrel! The thing was too absurd to pay attention to. But, instantly, his highly-sophisticated consciousness began to pay it attention. How many visits had he made to this distressed flower-girl? Three? And all because he didn’t like handing over the case to that society which always found out the worst. They said private charity was dangerous. Apparently it was! Blackmail! A consideration came, perching like a crow on the branches of his mind: Why hadn’t he mentioned the flower-girl to his wife and made _her_ do the visiting? Why! Because Olga would have said the girl was a fraud. And perhaps she was! A put-up job! Would the scoundrel have ventured on this threat at all if the girl were not behind him? She might support him with lies! His wife might believe them--she--she had such a vein of cynicism! How sordid, how domestically unpleasant! Granter felt quite sick. Every decent human value seemed suddenly in question. And a second crow came croaking: Could one leave a scoundrel like this to play his tricks with impunity? Oughtn’t one to go to the police? He stood extraordinarily still--a dappled leaf dropped from a plane-tree and lodged on his bowler hat; at the other end of him a little dog mistook him for a lamp-post. This was no joke! For a man with a reputation for humanity, integrity and common sense--no joke at all! A police court meant the prosecution of a fellow-creature; getting him perhaps a year’s imprisonment, when one had always felt that punishment practically never fitted crime! Staring at the river he seemed to see cruelty hovering over himself, his wife, society, the flower-girl, even over that scoundrel--naked cruelty, waiting to pounce on one or all. Which ever way one turned the thing was dirty, cruel. No wonder blackmail was accounted such a heinous crime. No other human act was so cold-blooded, spider-like, and slimy; none plunged so deadly a dagger into the bowels of compassion, so eviscerated humanity, so murdered faith! And it would have been even worse, if his conscience had not been clear. But was it so extremely clear? Would he have taken the trouble to go to that flower-girl’s dwelling, not once but three times, unless she had been attractive, unless her dark-brown eyes had been pretty, and her common voice so soft? Would he have visited the blowsy old flower-woman at that other corner, in circumstances, no doubt, just as strenuous? Honestly: No. Still, if he did like a pretty face he was not vicious--he was fastidious and detested subterfuge. But then Olga was so cynical, she would certainly ask him why he hadn’t visited the old flower-woman as well, and the lame man who sold