Why had she come? He wasted half an hour of precious time puzzling over this extraordinary action on her part. He had spoken no more than the truth, when he had said that from his childhood she had displayed an antagonism toward him which in maturity had puzzled him more than any other experience in his life. Antagonistic? She hated him! And, curiously enough, his father had known of her feeling, and though he had never made any direct reference to the enmity, had gone out of his way to make up for the affection the mother denied him. It was his father with whom he had corresponded throughout the days of the war; his father who had met him when he came home from France on leave; his father who had come day after day to the hospital to sit by the bedside of his wounded son; and when Peter had been discharged from the army, it was Donald who found him the secretaryship and had planned for him a great career in the world of politics. It was a puzzle beyond unravelment. Peter took up his pen again and tried, by a concentration of his exigent present, to forget the bitter past. CHAPTER XIII. PETER TELLS It was twelve o’clock when he put down his pen and rubbed his cramped hands. Throwing up the window to let out the smoke, he munched a biscuit and meditated; and then his face brightened, and his thoughts went unresistingly toward Leslie Maughan. Then through the open window he heard unsteady steps coming along the paved sidewalk. They paused before the door of the house; there was a rattle of the key. When Mrs. Inglethorne went out at night, she usually returned with that same unsteady footstep. Presently the door slammed, and her muttering came up to him from the passage. Usually she did not go out nights, but stayed at home to receive the curious callers who came at odd moments. They always knocked once with the knocker and once with the flat of their hands, and generally they carried a parcel or package, big or small. There was a whispered colloquy in the passage, the chink of money, or, more rarely, the rustle of treasury notes, and they went out again--without their parcels. This, Peter had seen and had not seen. Prison had taught him the wisdom of blindness, and he had not spoken to Mrs. Inglethorne of the furtive men and women who came slinking down Severall Street at those hours when the police patrol was well out of the way. Leslie Maughan! He smiled a little at the thought of her, more at his own madness. What barriers separated them--barriers more real, more invincible, than the difference between Scotland Yard and Dartmoor Prison! It was worse than madness to think about her! The scream that brought him to his feet was shrill and charged with fear and mortal agony. In two strides he was at the door and had pulled it wide open.