She feared to stay longer and slipped, wraith-like, down the stairs. In her room she sat down and considered. He must have been there. Where else could he be unless in one of the unoccupied apartments in the lower floors. But he hardly would have dared that with people coming and going. He had been afraid, doubted her as he had always done, or possibly found a hiding-place too shut away for her whisper to penetrate. To-night she would have to get food to him, take it up when the men were in the library and the others safe in their rooms. She could do nothing more and went down-stairs in the hope of seeing Bassett. Since morning she had longed for a word with him. Through the darkling obsession of her fears he loomed as the one loved and familiar being in a world where she fared in solitary dread. Not that she had any idea of telling him, the direful secret was hers alone to be confessed later on some awful day of reckoning and retribution. But she wanted to see him, get courage from his presence, feel the solace of his arm about her. She was so lonely with her intolerable burden. The living-room was empty, but listening at the hall door she heard the murmur of men’s voices in the library. They were in conference again and might be long. She passed out into the garden and sank down on one of the benches. The air had grown chilly and a little wandering breeze was abroad. It moved among the flowers and sent shivers down the great wisteria vine trained up the house wall and ascending to the chimneys. She looked at it, its drooping foliage; stirred by a quivering unrest, showing the fibrous branches intertwined like ropes--an old vine such as city dwellers seldom see. She tried to fix her attention on it, picturing it when the blossoms hung in lilac cascades, a riot of color from ground to roof. But her mind was like the needle in the compass, inevitably swinging back to the same point. There were clouds in the sky, hurrying white masses driving inland and carrying the breath of fog. They had blotted out the sun and were sweeping their torn edges over the blue. If they kept on it would be dark to-night--no moon--but there was the man at the causeway. She sat with drooped head immersed in thought, her hands thrust into the pockets of her sweater. It was thus that Bassett found her. Life leaped into her face at his voice and she stretched a hand toward him. “Oh, I’ve been hoping to see you,” she breathed, already trained to a low wariness of tone. The words, the gesture, pierced his heart. She looked so disconsolate, so wan, her face the pallor of ivory, her black hair always shining smooth, pushed back from her brow in roughened strands. He had charged himself to keep from her any knowledge of the interest in Joe, but had he been of the loose-tongued sort that unburdened itself, the sight of her devastated beauty would have sealed his lips.