"Why?" Traill insisted, and then Mrs. Durlacher turned her gaze to the window, looked far away across the stretch of fields ploughed and green, beyond the blue, rising land that lifts above Wycombe, into that distance which holds all the intricate mysteries of a woman's being. When a woman looks like this, a man strains eyes to follow her. He realizes all the distance, but cannot with his utmost effort decipher what it contains. And that very inability in him is the strongest weapon that she holds. He sees the distance, yet there is none. No wonder that he cannot discern its contents. There is no distance. She is looking inwards--not outwards; searching her own mind, searching his, and only playing the game of contemplation to hide what she has found. When Traill saw that expression of her face, he dropped the note of brass from his voice. "Why?" he asked again, almost gently. Her lips bound tight together as though she were keeping back her confession; her nostrils dilated, checking tears. "I wanted to see you--that's all." She said it with a shrug of the shoulders--the motion with which you shake an unwelcome thought from your mind. He pressed her further. "But you apparently knew I was bringing some one?" he said. She still looked towards her invisible horizon. "I guessed that--guessed that from your letter--the way you said you wanted to find no one down here. I thought you wouldn't mind my coming--besides--there was no one to order anything for you, and then--as I said--I wanted to see you." "Yes, but why?" He took her arm, held the elbow in the cup of his hand. She looked once more--looked long into her distance--then turned, petulantly almost, with a smothered sigh to the fireplace, rested her feet upon the fender, and redirected her gaze into the heart of the fire. "Oh, it's no good talking about it now," she said. "Miss Bishop '11 be down in a minute." "Aren't you happy? That it?" "Yes." "You aren't happy?" "No." "Harold?" "Yes." On the fender she beat out her thoughts. "All the things she wants to say and is too proud," he said to himself as he watched the tapping of her dainty toe. That was precisely what he was meant to think. "What's he done?" he asked. "Tisn't what he's done--I don't think he's done anything." "Then what?" He put his hand on her shoulder. "Poor old Dolly," he said softly. "But why did you say that about bringing mistresses down here?" She looked up frankly--generously into his eyes. "Jealousy," she admitted. He laughed lightly. It just caught the edge of his vanity to which she played. Then, bending down, he kissed her, and as Sally entered the room, she saw the kiss--to her, a kiss of Judas. In that instant, the intuition that it was she who was betrayed, shot upwards like a flame of fire, rushing the blood in a burning race to her temples. CHAPTER IV