“Evidently some devil of ill fate is mixing up in my affairs. What’s your advice in the matter?” “Tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” suggested Chester Kent. “Easily done. The question is whether you’ll believe it.” “If I hadn’t felt pretty sure of your innocence, I shouldn’t have opened the case to you as I’ve done. I’ll believe the truth if you tell it, and tell it all.” “Very well. I was sitting on my wall when the woman came down the road. I noticed her first when she stopped to look back, and her absurd elegance of dress, expensive and ill fitting, attracted my closer attention. She was carrying a bundle, wrapped in strong paper. It seemed to be heavy, for she shifted it from hand to hand. When she came near, I spoke to her—” “You spoke to her first?” “Well, we spoke simultaneously.” “Why should you speak to her, if she was a stranger to you?” “See here, Kent! You’ll have to let me tell this in my own way, if I’m to tell it at all.” “So long as you do tell it. What did she say to you?” “She asked me the time.” “Casually?” “Not as if she were making it a pretext to open a conversation, if that is what you mean.” “It is.” “Certainly it wasn’t that. She seemed anxious to know. In fact, I think she used the word ‘exact’; ‘the exact time,’ she said.” “Presumably she was on her way to an appointment, then.” “Very likely. When I told her, she seemed relieved; I might even say relaxed. As if from the strain of nervous haste, you know.” “Good. And then?” “She thanked me, and asked if I were Mr. Sedgwick. I answered that I was, and suggested that she make good by completing the introduction.” “She wasn’t a woman of your own class, then?” Sedgwick looked puzzled. “Well, no. I thought not, then, or I shouldn’t have been so free and easy with her. For one thing, she was painted badly, and the perspiration, running down her forehead, had made her a sight. Yet, I don’t know: her voice was that of a cultivated person. Her manner was awkward and her dress weird for that time of day, and, for all that, she carried herself like a person accustomed to some degree of consideration. That I felt quite plainly. I felt, too, something uncanny about her. Her eyes alone would have produced that impression. They were peculiarly restless and brilliant.” “Insane?” questioned Kent. “Not wholly sane, certainly; but it might have been drugs. That suggested itself to me.” “A possibility. Proceed.” “She asked what point of the headland gave the best view. ‘Anywhere from the first rise on is good,’ I said. ‘It depends on what you wish to see.’—‘My ship coming in.’ said she.—‘It will be a far view, then,’ I told her. ‘This is a coast of guardian reefs.’—‘What difference?’ she said, and then gave me another surprise; for she quoted: “‘And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond— Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.’”