While I hesitated I perceived that something was lying beside her on the floor. Where it had come from I could not tell; it was hardly the kind of thing to have fallen from a woman’s pocket. I picked it up. It was a photograph of Edwin Lawrence; I could not help but recognise the likeness directly I raised it. Back and front it was smeared with blood. Actuated by an impulse for which I did not attempt to account, rising, I thrust it between the leaves of a book which was on the mantelshelf. She moved. Turning, I found that she had raised herself a little, and was looking at me with her eyes wide open. “What is the matter with me? Have I been asleep?” Her frank, fearless gaze, with, in it, that strange look of bewilderment, filled me with a sudden sense of confusion. I stammered a reply. “You have not been very well. But you are better now. Let me help you to get up.” I held out my hand. Putting hers into it, she rose to her feet with a little spring. When she took her hand away, on mine there was a ruddy smirch. The condition of her plum-coloured garment, and of the bright green ribbons, seemed to have become more conspicuous even than before. “Hadn’t you better take off your cloak?” She looked at me as if amazed. “Take off my cloak? Why should I?” “You will be more comfortable without it.” “Do you think so? Then of course I’ll take it off.” She removed her cloak, with my assistance. I flung it over the back of a chair. “You will find water there with which to wash your hands and face.” Again she eyed me with that suggestion of surprise. “Why should I wash my hands and face?” “There is blood upon them.” “Blood?” She held out her hands with her former gesture. “So there is. I had forgotten. I cannot think how it came there.” Her cheeks assumed an added tinge of pallor. “Will it come off if I wash them?” It seemed impossible to doubt that it was seriously asked; yet the apparent puerility of the question stung me to a brusque response. “We will hope that soap and water will at least, remove the outward and visible stain.” Turning, I went into my dressing-room, she following me with her eyes. There I hastily donned some more conventional attire. Thence, passing into the dining-room, I called to her through the bedroom door. “When you are ready, may I ask you to come in here. We shall be more at our ease.” She did not keep me waiting, but appeared upon the instant, coming towards me holding out her hands as a child might do. “I’m clean now. Aren’t I clean?”