He felt a sudden heightened sense of curiosity and defiance, a feeling that had been growing within him ever since the discovery of Slade’s connection with the ring, and the brief, disjointed details of Beecher’s interview. Every profession develops, back of its elaborate technique, a sudden quality of instinct which exists as the almost mechanical and unguided operation of the disciplined mind. McKenna had no sooner entered the room than he perceived the woman with a quick defensive "on guard" of all his faculties. He stopped in the center of the room, like a pointer flushing his game, and in the second’s rapid inhalation he completely changed his scheme of attack. He felt at once that he had to do not alone with—what he expected—a woman of unusual physical attraction, clever, with the defensive intuition of one who has evaded the scrutiny of society; but with a woman of mental grasp and decision. He felt it everywhere: in the remarkable adjustment of the square room which broke it up into half a dozen separate groups, distinctive and sure as though so many separate selves; in the harmony of color and proportion, which he felt without analysis; in the seduction of the Récamier couch with its eastern drapery of blue and gold; in the friendly comfort of the grouped chairs by the baronial fireplace; in the correct intimacy of the reading-table at one end and the formality of the grouped chairs by the piano. All these notes were to him notes of the hand that had arranged them, as he felt in the struggling muscles of the bared marble torsos, wrestling on the mantel, and the lithe, virile body of the discus-thrower on the table, the virility and aggressiveness of the woman. This perception awoke his defiance as though one personality had been substituted for another. "What does she want with me?" he thought. "Is she daring enough to tell me all, or is she worried at what I may know?" While he was still in the midst of his reflections, Mrs. Kildair entered. She was in street costume: a tailor-made dress of dark blue, edged with black braid, the stiffness and sobriety relieved by a full fichu at her throat. The red flight of a feather crossed the Gainsborough hat. "How do you do?" she said, nodding to him, a crisp, businesslike abruptness in her voice. "A little more light would be better. Thanks. The button is by the door." Prepared as he had been to be surprised, he had not expected this businesslike manifestation. He went to the wall, following her directions, and threw on the lights. "Only the side lights," she said. "That’s it. Shall we sit here?"