“There was a train from town reaching Ashdridge Station at nine o’clock at night. I took it. I didn’t care to go to Inley Station, where everybody would know me, and wonder what I was up to. I didn’t take any luggage. My man asked if he should pack, and I said ‘No.’ I didn’t dine. I was at Paddington three-quarters of an hour before the train was due to start. At last it came in to the platform. Going down I read the evening papers just like any man going home from business. Soon after we got away from London I saw there was rain on the carriage windows. That seemed to me right. We were a little late at Ashdridge. It was still wet, and I had my coat collar turned up. I don’t believe they recognised me there. I set out to walk to Inley.” “What did you mean to do?” “I told you before.” I looked into his face, and believed him. Then I thought of Lady Inley’s childish, delicate beauty, of her slightly affected manner, the manner of a woman who has always been spoilt, whose paths have been made very smooth. And here she was living, apparently happily, with a man who had deliberately travelled down in the night to kill her. How ignorant we are! “You are condemning me,” Inley said, with a touch of hot anger. “I was only thinking⸺” “Yes?” “That we don’t know each other much in the greatest intimacy.” “That’s what I thought then.” He said that in a way which suddenly put me on his side. He must have seen the change in my feelings, for he went on, with his former unreserve: “I walked fast in the dark. I didn’t think very much, but I remember that all the trees—there’s a lot of woodland, you know, between Ashdridge and Inley—seemed alive. Everything seemed to me to be alive that night. I’ve never had that sensation before or since.” I realised what the condition of the man had been when he said that, as if I were a doctor and a patient had told me the symptom which put me in possession of his malady. “When I reached Inley it was late, and the long village street was deserted. There were lights in the inn and in the schoolmaster’s house, but there were no people about. I got through without meeting a soul, and came on towards the gates of the Abbey.” “You meant to go into the house?”