For they were charming to her. Harding, indeed, was more perfect in his beautiful quality than ever. There was something about him moreover that she had not been prepared for, something strange and pathetic, humble almost and appealing. She saw it in his eyes, his large, dark, wild animal eyes, chiefly. But it was a look that claimed as much as it deprecated; that assumed between them some unspoken communion and understanding. With all its pathos it was a look that frightened her. Neither he nor his wife said a word about Rodney Lanyon. She was not even sure, now, that they had recognised him. They stayed with her all that afternoon; for their time, they said, was getting short; and when, about six o'clock, Milly got up to go she took Agatha aside and said that, if Agatha didn't mind, she would leave Harding with her for a little while. She knew he wanted to talk to her. Agatha proposed that they should walk up the hill through the wood. They went in a curious silence and constraint; and it was not until they had got into the wood and were shut up in it together that he spoke. "I think my wife told you that I had something to say to you?" "Yes, Harding," she said; "what is it?" "Well, it's this--first of all I want to thank you. I know what you're doing for me." "I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know. I thought Milly wasn't going to tell you." "She didn't tell me." Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course, he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to shield her. "I mean," he went on, "that whether she told me or not, it's no matter. I knew." "You--knew?" "I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn't the place. Places never make any difference. I only go to 'em because Milly thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place--from my peculiar point of view, mind you--was simply beastly. I couldn't have stood another night of it." "Well." "Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is that I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you'd done something. I half hoped you might say something, but you never did." "One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I didn't want you to know." "I didn't know what you did. I don't know now, though Milly tried to tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time." "It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was." "What can I think?" "Think as I do; think--think----" She stopped herself. She was aware of the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had denied, the supernatural. "It isn't a question of thinking," she said at last. "Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?" "No; it isn't believing either. It's knowing. Either you know it or you don't know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you mustn't think it's me." "I rather like to. Why shouldn't I?"