Of course she had uttered them lightly, and of course he had taken them as a jest. Of course he knew too that the idea of connecting the brilliant Miss Davison with the pursuits of a pickpocket was absurd, revolting, horrible. He did not even, so he told himself, think the matter worth a second thought. But he went on thinking of nothing else, and hurried away to his rooms in Buckingham Street, oppressed by a sensation of discomfort and depression, such as he could not remember having ever experienced before. He stopped short suddenly as he was walking quickly along and tried to remember what the man was like to whom he had seen her hand the glittering object. But the whole episode had passed so swiftly, his own attention had been so completely absorbed in the girl herself and in what she was doing, that he had had no time or attention left for the man. He remembered vaguely that the man’s back was turned to him, that he was tall and broad-shouldered and that he wore a dark overcoat, but he could recall no more details, try as he would. The man, too, appeared to have been an expert at rapid disappearance, for when Gerard had turned to look for him he was gone. Supposing that Miss Davison, being a designer and therefore an artist, had been in the habit of disguising herself in order to be able to move about freely, and to see more of the world and of life than she could in her own proper person. Surely there was a possibility of that! There had been instances before of great artists passing themselves off as people of a lower station, in order to gain information. And, now he thought of it, it seemed to him highly probable, and not merely possible, that this high-spirited and clever woman, always active and on the alert for the means to make money for her family as well as for herself, should make a practice of disguising herself in the dress of a poor working-girl, in order the more readily to pass without attracting comment among the crowds of London, and perhaps even to collect facts which she could dress up into attractive press articles, or into book shape, with the object of earning a larger income. The more he considered the matter, the more reasonable this idea seemed. Her sister had said that she was a designer. Was it not more than probable that that was what Rachel called herself, and that her real occupation was that of a journalist, one of which her old-fashioned mother would probably have disapproved if she had been told of it.