crying because by his own irrevocable act something has been denied him. She bowed her head in her hands and gave herself up to an orgy of remorse. She was truly heartbroken. For a little while. The transience of her brokenheartedness may be gauged by the fact that on her way home she was strangely elated by a single thought. That thought--occurring to her some half-way down the Ridgeway--was begotten of her old ruthless habit of self-analysis. “I’m not heartless,” she told herself. “I can’t be. Nobody could have acted as I did who hadn’t got a heart. I believe I’ve got as much heart as anybody, really....” She was rather proud of the tears she had shed.... Delicious to have such proof that she was a human being! Reassuring to find in herself the essential humanities she had at times doubted. Comforting to think that tragedy could move her to sympathy that was more than merely æsthetic.... Splendid to know that deep down in her somewhere there was a fount of feeling which she could not turn off and on at will like a water-main.... CHAPTER IX NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH § 1 “CLAREMONT,” the Ridgeway, was a corner detached house well set back from the road. A high evergreen hedge impeded the view from the footpath, and a curving carriage drive overhung with rhododendron bushes hid all suggestion of a house until the last possible moment. Then all that you saw was a tiny porch and a panorama of low-hanging eaves, diamond window-panes and russet-brown roofs of immense steepness. A telephone bracket affixed to one of the rafters and an electric bell in the porch convinced you that all this parade of antiquarianism was really the most aggressive modernity. A motor-garage, suitably disguised, stood at one side of the house. Behind was a vista of tennis-courts, conservatories, and an Italian pergola. Beneath the tiny porch in the middle of a hot Sunday afternoon Catherine paused and pressed the button of the bell. She was excited. Her visit savoured of the miraculous. This was the house of the famous Emil Razounov The famous Emil Razounov had arranged this appointment to meet her. She was actually ringing the bell of Emil Razounov’s house. In another minute she and Emil Razounov would be face to face. A maid opened the door. “What name, please?” she asked pertly, and Catherine replied. Catherine passed into a wide hall, furnished with all sorts of queer furniture that she contrasted mentally with the bamboo hall-stand and the circular barometer that had graced the hall of No. 24, Kitchener Road. At one side a door was half open, and through this Catherine was ushered into what was apparently the front room of the house.