As exactly as I could I gave her an account of what had passed between Mr. Brokenshire and myself, omitting only those absurd suggestions of my own that had sent him away in dudgeon. She listened with no more interruption than a question or two, after which she said, simply: "Then, I suppose, I can't go any more." "On the contrary," I corrected, "you must come just the same as ever, only not on the same days, or at the same hours--or--or when there's any one else there besides the visitors and me. If you stopped coming all of a sudden Mr. Brokenshire would think--" "But he thinks that already." "Of course, but he doesn't know--not after what I said to him." I seized the opportunity to beg her to play up. "You are all the things I told him you were, dear Mrs. Brokenshire, don't you see you are?" But my appeal passed unheeded. "What made him suspect? I thought that would be the last thing." "I don't know. It might have been a lot of things. Once or twice I've rather fancied that some of the people who came there--" Her features contracted in a spasm of horror. "You don't mean detect--" She found the word difficult to pronounce. "You don't mean de-detectives watching--me?" "I don't say as much as that; but I've never liked Mr. Brokenshire's man, Spellman." "No, nor I. He's out now. I made sure of that before you came." "So he might have sent some one; or-- But it's no use speculating, is it? when there are so many ways. What we've specially got to know is how to act, and I think I've told you the best method. If you don't keep coming--judiciously--you'll show you're conscious of having done wrong." She sighed plaintively. "I don't want to do wrong unless I can't help it. If I can't--" "Oh, but you can." I tried once more to get in my point. "You wouldn't be all I told Mr. Brokenshire you were if your first instinct wasn't to do right." "Oh, right!" She sighed again, but impatiently. "You're always talking about that." "One has to, don't you think, when it's so important--and so easy to do wrong?" She grew mildly argumentative. "I don't see anything so terrible about wrong, when other people do it and are none the worse." "May not that be because you've never tried it on your own account? It depends a little on the grain of which one's made. The finer the grain, the more harm wrong can do to it--just as a fragile bit of Venetian glass is more easily broken than an earthenware jug, and an infinitely greater loss." But the simile was wasted. From long contemplation of her hands she looked up to say in a curiously coaxing tone: "You live at the Hotel Mary Chilton, don't you?" I caught her suggestion in a flash, and decided that I could let it go no further. "Yes, but you couldn't come there--unless it was only to see me." "But what shall I do?" It was a kind of cry. She twisted her ringed fingers, while her eyes implored me to help her.