"Not at all, Mr. Thane. She isn't ill. She has had a shock,--same as I have had,--and she'll get over it in good time." "You seem to have survived the shock remarkably well, Mrs. Strong," he said with unmistakable irony. "How is the scratch on your face?" she asked, ignoring the remark. "Amounts to nothing," he replied, almost gruffly. "I'll write a little note to Alix, if you'll be so good as to take it up to her." "Very well. I'll see that she gets it. Will you write it here?" "If you don't mind. I'll wait in case she wants to send down an answer." "I'll get you some paper and pen and ink," said she. "Some paper, that's all. I have a fountain pen." He dashed off a few lines, folded the sheet of note paper and handed it to Mrs. Strong. He had written nothing he was unwilling for her to read. In fact, he expected her to read it as soon as she was safely out of his sight. "She thinks she may feel up to seeing you tomorrow--or next day," reported the housekeeper on her return from Alix's room. His rankling brain seized upon the words--" tomorrow--next day." He had used them himself only the night before. "Tomorrow,--or next day!" He frowned. Hang it all, was she putting him off? He experienced a slight chill. "I will run in again in the morning," he said, managing to produce a sympathetic smile. "And I'll telephone this evening to see how she is." All the way down the walk to the gate, he kept repeating the words "tomorrow,--or next day." In some inexplicable way they had fastened themselves upon him. At the gate he turned and looked up at Alix's bedroom windows. The lace curtains hung straight and immovable. It pleased him to think that she was peering out at him from behind one of those screens of lace, soft-eyed and longingly. Moved by a sudden impulse, he waved his hand and smiled. His guess was right. She WAS looking down through the narrow slit between the curtains. Her eyes were dark and brooding and slightly contracted by the perplexity that filled them. She started back in confusion, her hand going swiftly to her breast. Was it possible that he could see through the curtains? A warm flush mantled her face. She felt it steal down over her body. Incontinently she fled from the window and hopped back into the warm bed she had left on hearing the front door close. "How silly!" she cried irritably. She sat bolt upright and looked at her reflection in the mirror of her dressing-table across the room. Her night-dress had slipped down from one shapely shoulder; her dark, glossy hair hung in two long braids down her back; her warm, red lips were parted in a shy, embarrassed smile. "I wonder--But of course he couldn't. Unless,--" and here the smile faded away,--"unless he possesses some strange power to see through walls and--Sometimes I feel that he has that power. If he could not see me, why did he wave his hand at me?" There came a knock at her door. She was seized by a sudden panic. For a moment she was unable to speak.