Going home, Adele stopped at a confectioner’s and a florist’s, collected the cakes and flowers that were to adorn the table of Mrs. Watson’s parlour. She wondered more than a little just what attraction she offered to this man of affairs. She had a trick of getting outside and examining herself with an impartial eye, and she knew that, by self-repression and almost self-obliteration, she had succeeded in making of Adele Leamington a very colourless, characterless young lady. That she was pretty she knew, but prettiness in itself attracts only the superficial. Men who are worth knowing require something more than beauty. And Michael was not philandering—he was not that kind. He wanted her for a friend at least: she had no thought that he desired amusement during his enforced stay in a very dull town. Half-past four came and found the girl waiting. At a quarter to five she was at the door, scanning the street. At five, angry but philosophical, she had her tea and ordered the little maid of all work to clear the table. Michael had forgotten! Of course, she made excuses for him, only to demolish them and build again. She was hurt, amused and hurt again. Going upstairs to her room, she lit the gas, took the script from her bag and tried to study the scenes that were to be shot on the following day, but all manner of distractions interposed between her receptive mind and the typewritten paper. Michael bulked largely, and the closed car, and Lawley Foss, and that waving white hand as the car drove off. Curiously enough, her speculations came back again and again to the car. It was new and its woodwork was highly polished and it moved so noiselessly. At last she threw the manuscript down and rose, with a doubtful eye on the bed. She was not tired; the hour was nine. Chichester offered few attractions by night. There were two cinemas, and she was not in the mood for cinemas. She put on her hat and went down, calling _en route_ at the kitchen door. “I am going out for a quarter of an hour,” she told her landlady, who was in an approving mood. The house was situate in a street of small villas. It was economically illuminated, and there were dark patches where the light of the street lamps scarcely reached. In one of these a motor-car was standing—she saw the bulk of it before she identified its character. She wondered if the owner knew that its tail light was extinguished. As she came up to the machine she identified the car she had seen on the previous night—Foss had spoken to its occupant. Glancing to the left, she could see nothing of its interior. The blinds on the road side were drawn, and she thought it was empty, and then . . . “Pretty lady—come with me!” The voice was a whisper: she caught the flash and sparkle of a precious stone, saw the white hand on the edge of the half-closed window, and, in a fit of unreasoning terror, hurried forward.