“Some day, perhaps, you will come to see Lynette. Or I could bring her up to town and leave her at your friend’s for you to find her. I promise to lay no ambuscades. When you have gone I can call for her again. “I should love her better because she had been near you.” Kate Duveen was hard at work one evening, struggling, with the help of a dictionary, through a tough book on German philosophy, when the maid knocked at her door. “What is it, Polly?” The girl’s name was Ermentrude, but Kate persisted in calling her Polly. “There’s a gentleman downstairs, miss. ’E’s sent up ’is card. ’E wondered whether you’d see ’im.” Kate glanced at the card and read, “James Canterton.” She hesitated a moment. “Yes, I will see him. Ask him up.” Her hard, workaday self had risen as to a challenge. She felt an almost fierce eagerness to meet this man, to give him battle, and rout him with her truth-telling and sarcastic tongue. Canterton, as she imagined him, stood for all the old man-made sexual conveniences, and the social makeshift that she hated. He was the big, prejudiced male, grudging a corner of the working world to women, but ready enough to make use of them when his passions or his sentiments were stirred. When he came into the room she did not rise from the table, but remained sitting there with her books before her. “Miss Duveen?” “Yes. Will you shut the door and sit down?” She spoke with a rigid asperity, and he obeyed her, but without any sign of embarrassment or nervousness. There was just a subtle something that made her look at him more intently, more interestedly, as though he was not the sort of man she had expected to see. “It is Mr. Canterton of Fernhill, is it not?” “Yes.” She was merciless enough to sit there in silence, with her rigid, watchful face, waiting for him to break the frost. Her mood had passed suddenly beyond mere prejudice. She felt the fighting spirit in her piqued by a suspicion that she was dealing with no ordinary man. He sat in one of her arm-chairs, facing her, and meeting her eyes with perfect candour. “I am wondering whether I must explain——” “Your call, and its object?” “Yes.” “I don’t think it is necessary. I think I know why you have come.” “So much the better.” She caught him up as though he were assuming her to be a possible accomplice. “I may as well tell you that you will get nothing out of me. She does not live here.” “Perhaps you will tell me what you imagine my object to be.” “You want Eve Carfax’s address.” For the first time she saw that she had stung him. “Then I can assure you you are wrong. I have no intention of asking for it. It is a point of honour.” She repeated the words slowly, and in a quiet and ironical voice. “A point of honour!” She became conscious of his smile, a smile that began deep down in his eyes. It angered her a little, because it suggested that his man’s knowledge was deeper, wiser, and kinder than hers.