"Then I intend to blunder into that room!" And I tore the portière from her grasp and flung it to one side. "Wait," she whispered, white-faced and panting close beside me. "I'll tell you everything. I'll explain it--everything." The tragic solemnity of that low-toned relinquishment brought me up short. It was my turn to be bewildered by an opponent I could not understand. "Sit down," she said, with a weary and almost imperious movement of the hand as she advanced into the room and again sank into the chair beside the writing-desk. "Now what is it you want to know?" she asked, with only too obvious equivocation. Her trick to gain time exasperated me. "Don't quibble and temporize that way," I cried. "Say what you've got to, and say it quick." She directed at me a look which I resented, a look of scorn, of superiority, of resignation in the face of brutalities which I should never have subjected her to. Yet, when she spoke again her voice was so calm as to seem almost colorless. "I said this was my home--and it's true. This was once my room. Several weeks ago I left it." "Why?" I inquired, resenting the pause which was plainly giving her a chance to phrase ahead of her words. "I quarreled with my husband. I went away. I was angry. I--I-- There's no use explaining what it was about." "You've got to explain what it was about," I insisted. "You couldn't possibly understand. It's impossible to explain," she went quietly on. "I discharged a servant who was not honest. Then he tried to blackmail me. He lied about me. I had been foolish, indiscreet, anything you care to call it. But the lie he told was awful, unbelievable. That my husband should ask me to disprove it was more than I could endure. We quarreled, miserably, hopelessly. I went away. I felt it would be humiliating to stay under the same roof with him." "Wait," I interposed, knowing the weak link was sure to present itself in time. "Where is your husband now?" She glanced toward the curtained door. "He's in that room asleep," she quietly replied. "And knowing him to be asleep you came to clean out the house?" I promoted. "No," she answered without anger. "But when service was begun for an interlocutory decree I knew I could never come back openly. There were certain things of my own I wanted very much." "And just how did you get into the house?" "The one servant I could trust agreed to throw off the latch after midnight, to leave the door unlocked for me when I knew I would never be seen." "Then why couldn't that trusted servant have secured the things, these things you came after? Without all this foolish risk of your forcing your way into a house at midnight?" Her head drooped a little. "I wanted to see my husband," was the quiet-toned response. Just how, she did not explain. I had to admit to myself that it was very good acting. But it was not quite convincing; and the case against her was too palpably clear.