Concerning three matters of fact, however, she completely withheld her confidence, both then, in those first delicious hours of their acquaintance, and even later, when their friendship--well, why not say friendship, for Carden had felt a very strong liking as well as an over-mastering attraction for this Undine-like creature?--had become much closer. The first and second facts which she kept closely hidden, for reasons which should perhaps have been obvious, were her surname--she confided to him that her Christian name was Pansy--and her husband's profession. The third fact which she concealed was the name of the town where she lived, and from which she appeared to be travelling that day. The trifling incidents of that eventful October journey had become to a great extent blurred in Theodore Carden's memory, but what had followed was still extraordinarily vivid, and to-day, on this holiday morning, standing idly looking out of the window, he allowed his mind a certain retrospective licence. From whom, so he now asked himself, had first come the suggestion that there should be no parting at Euston between himself and the strange elemental woman he found so full of unforced fascination and disarming charm? The answer soon came echoing down the corridors of remembrance: from himself, of course. But even now the memory brought with it shame-faced triumph as he remembered her quick acquiescence, as free, as unashamed, as joyous as that of a spoilt child acclaiming an unlooked-for treat. And, after all, what harm had there been in the whole halcyon adventure--what injury had it caused to any human being? Carden put the husband, the fatuous old man, who had had the incredible folly to marry a girl thirty-five years younger than himself, out of court. Pansy, light-hearted, conscienceless Pansy--he always thought of her with a touch of easy tenderness--had run no risk of detection, for, as he had early discovered, she knew no one in London with the solitary exception of the old cousin who lived in Upper Norwood. As for his own business acquaintances, he might, of course, have been seen by any of them taking about this singularly attractive woman, for the two went constantly to the theatre, and daily to one or other of the great restaurants. But what then? Excepting that she was quieter in manner, far better dressed, and incomparably prettier, Pansy might have been the wife or sister of any one of his own large circle of relations, that great Carden clan who held their heads so high in the business world of the Midlands. Nay, nay, no risk had been run, and no one had been a penny the worse! Indeed, looking back, Theodore Carden told himself that it had been a perfect, a flawless episode; he even admitted that after all it was perhaps as well that there had been no attempt at a repetition.