"I was like that," she said simply enough, as she told me the story. "I was a silly girl, wasn't I, Tommy?" Words thronged to my lips in such a gush of protestation that I stuttered stupidly and couldn't utter a coherent syllable. She went on with a laugh, "And he said to me in such a strange way, 'I _am_ keeping him from you,' and walked away and left me." I thought nothing of it, partly because I was too intent upon Jenny herself, and partly because I knew the reserved, bitter way in which Worthing chose to disguise his real thoughts. That was all I learnt of Worthing, for Jenny hadn't seen him since. * * * * * A few days later I made my way to the city a second time. I remember Dirk had changed our lodging that same morning, owing to a rather nasty brawl. There was a strange excitement among the clerks in the office when I went in and enquired if Worthing had returned yet. The senior clerk took me gravely aside, and speaking confidentially said: "You were his friend, I think?" "Yes," I replied, in unaccountable alarm at something sinister in the tone of his voice. "Yes," he repeated, stroking his chin. Then suddenly looking me in the eyes, and laying a hand very gently on my shoulder, he said sadly, "He's dead," and as I started back, "Dead," he repeated, "and the master too. They were found murdered in a boat at Naples." CHAPTER XXIX ALONE To say that the news stunned me would merely be to use an empty conventional phrase. Not even the shock of my father's death had so dislocated my whole power of thought and association. My father, I had always known, lived continually under the shadow of danger. For a hand to reach for him out of the dark was a chance I had long reckoned into the scheme of things. The sudden blow had struck merely at my heart of love. It had been desolating, but not bewildering. And that was last year. But now I waded in a mist of baffling and unreasonable extravagances. I was like a thing blind-folded, and set to find my way through a tangled maze, with voices crying to me conflicting directions, walls suddenly confronting me where there had seemed to be an open space, hands pushing me away when I thought I had stumbled on to a path at last. There seemed no motive, no coherence, no unity, in the chaos about me. Nothing tangible offered itself to my distracted clutching. All was fluid, impalpable, as though the world had shifted its centre, throwing everything into a false relation and perspective.