“You mean he’s called me one already?” He accepted the fact with his gayest laugh. “Well, that saves a lot of trouble; now we can pass to the order of the day----” he broke off and glanced at the clock--“which is, you know, dear, that she’s starting in about an hour; she and Adelaide must already be snatching a hasty sandwich. You’ll come down to bid them good-bye?” “Yes--of course.” There had, in fact, grown upon her while he spoke the urgency of seeing Sophy Viner again before she left. The thought was deeply distasteful: Anna shrank from encountering the girl till she had cleared a way through her own perplexities. But it was obvious that since they had separated, barely an hour earlier, the situation had taken a new shape. Sophy Viner had apparently reconsidered her decision to break amicably but definitely with Owen, and stood again in their path, a menace and a mystery; and confused impulses of resistance stirred in Anna’s mind. She felt Owen’s touch on her arm. “Are you coming?” “Yes ... yes ... presently.” “What’s the matter? You look so strange.” “What do you mean by strange?” “I don’t know: startled--surprised.” She read what her look must be by its sudden reflection in his face. “Do I? No wonder! You’ve given us all an exciting morning.” He held to his point. “You’re more excited now that there’s no cause for it. What on earth has happened since I saw you?” He looked about the room, as if seeking the clue to her agitation, and in her dread of what he might guess she answered: “What has happened is simply that I’m rather tired. Will you ask Sophy to come up and see me here?” While she waited she tried to think what she should say when the girl appeared; but she had never been more conscious of her inability to deal with the oblique and the tortuous. She had lacked the hard teachings of experience, and an instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear and open than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything of the intricacies and contradictions of other hearts. She said to herself: “I must find out----” yet everything in her recoiled from the means by which she felt it must be done... Sophy Viner appeared almost immediately, dressed for departure, her little bag on her arm. She was still pale to the point of haggardness, but with a light upon her that struck Anna with surprise. Or was it, perhaps, that she was looking at the girl with new eyes: seeing her, for the first time, not as Effie’s governess, not as Owen’s bride, but as the embodiment of that unknown peril lurking in the background of every woman’s thoughts about her lover? Anna, at any rate, with a sudden sense of estrangement, noted in her graces and snares never before perceived. It was only the flash of a primitive instinct, but it lasted long enough to make her ashamed of the darknesses it lit up in her heart...