"Why, of course." Cassy could talk and very fluently. But at the moment she choked. What is worse, she flushed. Conscious of which and annoyed at it, she withdrew her hand and said: "It's so hot here!" Lennox looked about, then at her. "Is it? Was that what you wanted to say?" Cassy shook herself. "No, and it was very rude of me. I wanted to thank you. Good-bye, Mr. Policeman." "Good-bye," he threw after the girl, who, in leaving the room, must have taken the sunlight with her. As she passed over the rug, the puddle passed too. It followed her out like a dog. That phenomenon, to which Lennox then attached no significance, he afterward recalled. For the moment he busied himself with pen and ink. Presently he touched a button. From regions beyond the little old man appeared. Lennox motioned at the bundle. "Take that to this address. Ask for Mr. Cara and say it comes from the police. From the police, don't forget, Harris." "I'll not forget, sir." "And go now. When the ladies come, I'll open the door." As it happened, only shadows came. The shadows lengthened. They lapped the floor, devoured the silver, turned the rug into a pit, the room into darkness. Apart from shadows, no one came, no one rang. But, though Lennox was unaware of it, two people did come, and of the two one would have rung, had not the other prevented. Lennox did not know that. On the inaccessible planes where events are marshalled, it was perhaps prearranged that he should not. VII Margaret, on her way to Lennox that afternoon, wondered whether it might not be possible for them to live elsewhere. Born and bred in the sordid hell with a blue sky that New York was before the war, latterly the sky itself had darkened. The world in which she moved, distressed her. Its parure of gaiety shocked. Those who peopled it were not sordid, they were not even blue. Europe agonised and they dined and danced, displayed themselves at the opera, summarised the war as dreadful, dismissed it, gossiped and laughed. It was that attitude which distressed this girl who, had she been capable of wishing ill to any one, might have wished them treated as were the elegantes of Brussels. Margaret had no such evil wish. But she did hope that when married, she might reside elsewhere. "There goes that Mrs. Tomlinson," said her mother. "Last night at the Bazaar--what do you suppose? She asked me to dinner. She actually did! The woman must be mad." Margaret made no reply. Park Avenue was very bright. To her also for the moment the scientific savagery of the Huns was remote. The brightness of the April day was about her.