And then Althea at last understood, and so understanding her mind for once moved quickly, and she saw with mingled terror and revolt what it was that the woman on whose face her eyes were now riveted was requiring of her. "You sent for me to take him home--dead?" It was a statement rather than a question. Mrs. Panfillen made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent. "It is what he would have wished," she whispered, "I am quite sure it is what he would have wished you to do." "I--I am sorry, but I don't think I can do that." Althea was speaking to herself rather than to the other woman. She was grappling with a feeling of mortal horror and fear. She had always been afraid of Perceval Scrope, afraid and yet fascinated, and now he, dead, seemed to be even more formidable, more beckoning, than he had been alive. She turned away and covered her eyes with her hand. "Why did you tell me?" she asked, a little wildly. "If you hadn't told me that he was dead I should never have known. I should even have done the--the dreadful thing you want me to do." "Bolt thought that--Bolt said you would not know," Mrs. Panfillen spoke with sombre energy. "She wished me to allow her to take him down into the garden to meet you in the darkness----But,--but Althea, that would have been an infamous thing from me to you----" She waited a moment, and then in a very different voice, in her own usual measured and gentle accents, she added, "My dear, forgive me. We will never speak of this again. I was wrong, selfish, to think of subjecting you to such an ordeal. All I ask"--and there came into her tone a sound of shamed pleading--"is that you should allow Tom--Tom and other people--to think that you were here when it happened." Althea remained silent. Then, uncertainly, she walked across to the window and opened it. The action was symbolic--and so it was understood by the woman watching her so anxiously. But still Althea said nothing. She stood looking out into the darkness, welcoming the feel of the cold damp air. She gave herself a few brief moments--they seemed very long moments to Joan Panfillen--before she said the irrevocable words, and when she did say them, they sounded muffled, and uttered from far away, for Althea as she spoke did not turn round; she feared to look again on that which might unnerve her, render her unfit for what she was about to do. "Joan," she said, "I will do what you ask. You were right just now--right, I mean, in telling me what Perceval would have wished." She spoke with nervous, dry haste, and, to her relief, the other woman spared her thanks....