She told herself that he was the Columbus who had shown her the new land of culture, with all its fair places, intellectual and artistic. This was the whole meaning of the change in her. There could be nothing else. CHAPTER XIV HELEN THURWELL ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION At the summit of the little spur of cliff they paused. Close on one side were the windows of Falcon's Nest, and on the other the batch of black firs which formed the background to it ran down the steep cliff side to the sea. The path which they were following curved round the cottage, and crossed the moor within a few yards of the spot where Sir Geoffrey had been found. As they stood together for a moment before parting, she noticed, with a sudden cold dismay, that thick shutters had recently been fitted to the windows of the little room into which she had stolen on the day of Sir Geoffrey's murder. "Are you afraid of being robbed?" she asked. "One would imagine that your room there held a secret." She was watching him, and she told herself the shot had gone to its mark. He followed her finger with his eyes, and kept his face turned away from her. "Yes, that is so," he answered quietly. "That little room holds its secret and its ghost for me. Would to God," he cried, with a sudden passion trembling in his tones, "that I had never seen it--that I had never come here!" Her heart beat fast. Could it be that he was going to confess to her? Then he turned suddenly round, and in the twilight his white face and dark luminous eyes seemed to her like mute emblems of an anguish which moved her woman's heart to pity. There was none of the cowardice of guilt there, nothing of the criminal in the deep melancholy which seemed to have set its mark upon his whole being. And yet he must be very guilty--very much a criminal. Her eyes strayed from his face back to the window again. There was no light anywhere in the house. It had a cold desolate look which chilled her. "Is that the room where you sit?" she asked, pointing to it. "Yes. There is no other furnished, except my housekeeper's, and she is away now." "Away! Then who is with you in the house?" "At present, no one," he answered. "She was taken ill, and went home this morning. She is generally ill." She looked at him perplexed. "But who does your cooking for you, and light the fires, and that sort of thing?" "I haven't thought about it yet," he answered. "I did try to light the fire this afternoon, but I couldn't quite manage it. I--I think the sticks must have been damp," he added hesitatingly. She looked at him, wet through and almost blue with cold, and at the dull cheerless-looking cottage. Again the woman in her triumphed, and her eyes filled with tears.