A strange person! Amazingly rude and ill-bred. To take upon himself to warn me to take care of my own child! And _what_ did he mean 'got on her nerves?' I really began to think he must be a little mad. But one thing was apparent; his feeling towards Jane was, as I had long suspected, much warmer than was right in the circumstances. He had, I made no doubt, come from her just now. I found Jane silent and unresponsive. She was not writing when I came in, but sitting doing nothing. She said nothing to me about Mr. Gideon's call, till I mentioned him myself. Then she seemed to stiffen a little; I saw her hands clench over the arms of her chair. 'His manner was very strange,' I said. 'I couldn't help wondering if he had been having anything.' 'If he was drunk, you mean,' said Jane. 'I dare say.' 'Then he _does_!' I cried, a little surprised. Jane said not that she knew of. But every one did sometimes. Which was just the disagreeable, cynical way of talking that I regret in her and Johnny. As if she did not know numbers of straight, clean-living, decent men and women who never had too much in their lives. But, anyhow, it convinced me that Mr. Gideon _did_ drink too much, and that she knew it. 'He had been here, I suppose,' I said gently, because I didn't want to seem stern. 'Yes,' said Jane, and that was all. 'My dear,' I said, after a moment, laying my hand on hers, 'is this man worrying you ... with attentions?' Jane laughed, an odd, hard laugh that I didn't like. 'Oh, no,' she said. 'Oh, dear no, mother.' She got up and began to walk about the room. 'Never mind Arthur,' she said. 'I wouldn't let him get on my mind if I were you, mother.... Let's talk about something else--baby, if you like.' I perceived from this that Jane was really anxious to avoid discussion of this man, for she did not as a rule encourage me to talk to her about the little life which was coming, as we hoped, next spring. So I turned from the subject of Arthur Gideon. But it remained on my mind. 3 You know how, sometimes, one wakes suddenly in the night with an extraordinary access of clearness of vision, so that a dozen small things which have occurred during the day and passed without making much apparent impression on one's mind stand out sharp and defined in a row, like a troop of soldiers with fixed bayonets all pointing in one direction. You look where they are pointing--and behold, you see some new fact which you never saw before, and you cannot imagine how you came to have missed it. It was in this way that I woke in the middle of the night after I had met Arthur Gideon in Hampstead. All in a row the facts stood, pointing. Mr. Gideon had been in the house only a few minutes before Oliver was killed. He and Oliver hated each other privately, and had been openly quarrelling in the press for some time. He had an intimacy with Jane which Oliver disliked. Oliver must have been displeased at his coming home that evening with Jane. Gideon drank.