Charis Lang had kept her composure during that trying interview with the inspector, and had forced herself to tell him everything she had to tell that could even indirectly bear upon the murders. She had felt that this was her duty; and in her the sense of duty was unusually strong. But the telling had cost her a terrible effort, and when the inspector went away, and there was no longer need to hold herself up bravely, her fortitude gave way. She had told things which, until then, she had not admitted even to herself; and what hurt her most was that, in telling the truth and nothing but the truth, she had been compelled to let John Prinsep’s character appear in the worst light. Not, she told herself, that it mattered to him any longer; but she loved him, and it was horrible to her that she should have to drag his memory in the mud. Moreover, was he not suspected of having killed George Brooklyn, and would not her account of him have made such an act seem more probable? She did not believe that he had done so, and, as she thought over her conversation with the inspector, she felt that she had been false to his memory; and yet she knew that there was nothing else she could have done. But why had Walter Brooklyn been so dragged into the case by the detective? Until Inspector Blaikie had come to see her, she had been quite without a theory of the events of Tuesday. She had been stunned by the fact of Prinsep’s death, and she had hardly troubled to think who could have killed him. Now it was clear that the police believed that Walter Brooklyn had something to do with it. An odious man, by all accounts, and one who had proved himself odious beyond measure in his dealings with her. Yet not a man she would readily have suspected of murder with violence. Underhand crimes—dirty, little crimes—she said to herself, would be more in keeping with what she knew of him. And then, despite his treatment of her, she accused herself of being uncharitable. After all, there was some dignity about murder; and her feeling, biased no doubt by her personal experience, was that Walter Brooklyn was not even fit to be a murderer. Charis felt that she could not go on to the stage that afternoon as if nothing had happened. She had forced herself to play her part—and had played it as well as ever—since the tragedy; but for that afternoon at least she must be free, and her understudy must take her place. Having been forced to tell her story to the inspector, she felt all the more need to tell it again to some one more sympathetic—to some real friend capable of understanding what she had suffered and of sharing in her sorrow. Speedily her mind was made up. She must see Isabelle, Mrs. George Brooklyn. Isabelle, too, was in trouble at least as hard as her own. Isabelle had lost her George, as she had lost John Prinsep.