About a week after the funeral he called at the shop, ostensibly to buy a book, but really to offer his condolences. He had been meaning to go, for several days in succession, but a curious dread of an interview with Clare had operated each time for postponement. Nor could he understand this dread. He tried to analyse it, to discover behind it any conceivable reason or motive; but the search was in vain. He was forced to suppose, vaguely, that the cause of it was that slight but noticeable temperamental hostility between himself and Clare which always resulted in a clouding over of his dreams. It was a chilly day for July; there was no sun, and the gas was actually lit in the shop when he called. The boy, a smart under-sized youngster, was there to serve him, but he asked for Miss Harrington. She must have heard his voice, for she appeared almost straightway, dressed neatly and soberly in black, and greeted him with a quite brisk: "Good afternoon, Mr. Speed!" He shook hands with her gravely and began to stammer: "I should have called before, Miss Harrington, to offer you my sincerest sympathies, but--" She held up her hand in an odd little gesture of reproof and said interrupting him: "Please don't. If you want a chat come into the back room. Thomas can attend to the shop." He accepted her invitation almost mechanically. It was a small room, full of businesslike litter such as is usual in the back rooms of shops, but a piano and bookcase gave it a touch of individuality. As she pointed him to a seat she said: "Don't think me rude, but this is the place for conversation. The shop is for buying things. You'll know in future, won't you?" He nodded somewhat vaguely. He could not determine what exactly was astounding in her, and yet he realised that the whole effect of her was somehow astounding. More than ever was he conscious of the subtle hostility, by no means amounting to unfriendliness, but perhaps importing into her regard for him a tinge of contempt. "Do you know," he said, approaching the subject very deliberately, "that until a very short time ago I knew nothing at all about Mr. Harrington? You never told me." "Why should I?" She was on her guard in an instant. He went on: "You may think me sincere or not as you choose, but I should like to have met him." "He had a dislike of being met." She said that with a touch of almost vicious asperity. He went on, far less daunted by her rudeness than he would have been if she had given way to emotion of any kind: "Anyway I have got to know him as well as I can by reading his books." "What a way to get to know him!" she exclaimed, contemptuously. She looked him sternly in the face and said: "Be frank, Mr. Speed, and admit that you found my father's books the most infantile trash you ever read in your life!" "Miss Harrington!" he exclaimed, protesting. She rose, stood over him menacingly, and cried: "You have your chance to be frank, mind!"