And yet--there was the rub!--it had seemed to him, that afternoon at the Academy, that Rachel looked at him with a certain expression which suggested that, so far from having forgotten him, she retained almost as vivid a remembrance of him as he did of her. This was not a fancy, it was a fact, and it completed his subjugation to the tyranny of his ideal. He began to haunt the West End, hovering between Sloane Street and Regent Street until one evening, when there was a grand dinner-party given, and a great crowd was assembled in one of the Squares in the expectation of the arrival of royalty, he recognized, with a pang of surprise and terror which almost made him cry out aloud, the face and figure of Rachel Davison not far away from him. She was dressed in a shabby skirt and blouse, and an old, shapeless black hat, but the disguise was ineffectual for him; he knew her at once, and was about to approach her, and to address her, when suddenly he saw her withdraw to the outskirts of the crowd, followed by a thickset man rather above the middle height. Gerard, hiding himself with a strange sickness at his heart, among the crowd, nevertheless kept watch. And he saw her hand something bright and glistening to the man, and then disappear absolutely from sight. Gerard staggered out of the crowd, faint as if he had received a physical wound. Was Rachel a thief? CHAPTER III The incident happened so quickly, the appearance and disappearance from Gerard’s sight of the disguised Rachel had been so sudden, so rapid, so quiet, that it seemed as if the whole affair had been a vision, a dream, anything but solid reality. Was he mistaken about the identity of the girl? Gerard began to think he must be. After all, it was night-time, there was a great crowd of people about him, pushing and struggling, and it was easy enough, in such circumstances, to mistake an accidental likeness for a strong one. At least, this was what he told himself, desperately anxious not to be forced to come to the conclusion that the girl he had just seen acting in such a strange, and such a suspicious manner, was the beautiful Rachel Davison who had made so great an impression upon him, whom he could not forget. Although, however, he was unable to accept his own argument that he might have been mistaken as to the identity of the woman, it was still open to him to invent reasons why he might have been mistaken as to what she was doing. He had believed he saw her hand to a man a glittering ornament which looked like diamonds. And the impression had brought vividly and painfully to his mind the remembrance of the first occasion of his meeting Rachel, and of her display of nimbleness with her fingers. There came back to his mind with unpleasant iteration the words she had uttered about her accomplishment being good for nothing; unless she meant to pick pockets.