“I’m a fool!” she replied. “I’m wasting time and running risks instead of saying my say and getting on with my business. Let’s leave all this nonsense and get back to where we started. I’m going to watch James instead of you. Let Stalker think you’ve given it up. Make out that you’re tired of watching and finding nothing, and then when I’ve aught to tell you they’ll be off their guard. You aren’t deep enough for James.” “Happen not,” he assented grudgingly; “but t’ pace is too hot to last. He’ll trip before long, you’ll see. I don’t like t’ thought of you being mixed up with it, Nancy. If he was to pick it out he’d raise hell, and if he was to touch you—” “If he was to touch me,” she said proudly, “he’d know about it, but I doubt if he will. He’s all for himself, Jagger, and his skin’s dear to him. He’d like to, well enough, I daresay; but he dursn’t. Don’t you worry about me. I was born on the moor.” She saw the danger light return to his eyes and at that signal changed her tone. “Get you gone!” she said quietly; “we’ve stood three times too long already. I’ll find ways and means of letting you know if there’s aught to tell.” She moved away as she spoke, without a word of farewell, and never once turned her head, so that she did not see how he stood, shading his eyes with his hand, watching her figure grow smaller and less distinct as the distance between them increased. All the man’s complacency had been shattered by the interview, and he knew that the anodyne of hard work had left the sore in his heart untouched: that the hours he had crowded with plans and projects in the hope of obliterating thoughts of what might have been had been to that extent hours wasted. Yet, though he knew himself maimed and marred by this severance from the woman he loved: though the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice had inflamed every spirit-nerve until the sense of pain was intolerable, he was conscious at the same time of a kind of fierce satisfaction because the pain could not make him writhe. Whatever Nancy had withheld from him she had at any rate given him manliness; and he could hold up his head among other men and walk unashamed. When he could no longer see her he walked smartly homewards, busying his thoughts with the subject that was never far from them, of Inman’s enmity and Stalker’s attitude of hostility. He had said nothing when Nancy spoke of the conference between her husband and the policeman because there had been nothing to say. Everybody knew that they were taking place, just as everybody knew that Jagger was suspected by the two of knowing more than any other living soul about the robbery. The suspicion was too ridiculous to afford him a moment’s uneasiness. Why should he worry when he had the confidence and goodwill of his neighbours, every one of whom scouted the notion of his dishonesty as a conceit that only the brain of an unfriendly foreigner could entertain?