At first she failed to grasp his implication that if, owing to his affliction, Harding Powell didn't count, Milly, his young wife did. Her faculties of observation and of inference would, he took it, be unimpaired. "_She_'ll wonder, won't she?" he expounded. "About us? Not she. She's too much wrapped up in him to notice anyone." "And he?" "Oh, my dear--He's too much wrapped up in _it_." Another anxiety then came to him. "I say, you know, he isn't dangerous, is he?" She laughed. "Dangerous? Oh dear me, no! A lamb." CHAPTER TWO She kept on saying to herself, Why shouldn't they come? What difference did it make? Up till now she had not admitted that anything could make a difference, that anything could touch, could alter by a shade the safe, the intangible, the unique relation between her and Rodney. It was proof against anything that anybody could think. And the Powells were not given to thinking things. Agatha's own mind had been a crystal without a flaw, in its clearness, its sincerity. It had to be to ensure the blessed working of the gift; as again, it was by the blessed working of the gift that she had kept it so. She could only think of that, the secret, the gift, the inexpressible thing, as itself a flawless crystal, a charmed circle; or rather, as a sphere that held all the charmed circles that you draw round things to keep them safe, to keep them holy. She had drawn her circle round Rodney Lanyon and herself. Nobody could break it. They were supernaturally safe. And yet the presence of the Powells had made a difference. She was forced to own that, though she remained untouched, it had made a difference in him. It was as if, in the agitation produced by them, he had brushed aside some veil and had let her see something that up till now her crystal vision had refused to see, something that was more than a lurking possibility. She discovered in him a desire, an intention that up till now he had concealed from her. It had left its hiding place; it rose on terrifying wings and fluttered before her, troubling her. She was reminded that, though there were no lurking possibilities in her, with him it might be different. For him the tie between them might come to mean something that it had never meant and could not mean for her, something that she had refused not only to see but to foresee and provide for. She was aware of a certain relief when Monday came and he had left her without any further unveilings and revealings. She was even glad when, about the middle of the week, the Powells came with a cart-load of luggage and settled at the Farm. She said to herself that they would take her mind off him. They had a way of seizing on her and holding her attention to the exclusion of all other objects.