She had been in bed according to her reckoning for about an hour when she heard a noise of the shutting of a door. And the door was the front-door of the house. Cynthia sprung from her bed and lifting the blind looked out from the window. It was a dark night, but there was no fog. By the light of the street lamps she saw a man crossing the road toward the corner of South Audley Street. He had the look of her husband. She flung up the window and the sound of his footsteps made her sure. Her eyes gazing into the tempered darkness of a London street might well have deceived her, her ears could not. There was no one else walking in Curzon Street at that moment; the sound of his footsteps reverberated unmistakably, diminishing as the distance between him and the window increased. The man who now vanished into South Audley Street was Harry Rames. Cynthia switched on the light and looked at her watch. It was one o'clock in the morning. She wrapped a dressing-gown about her and sat down trying to think calmly, seeking to discover, if she could, some other reason for his departure than the obvious one. But the obvious one recurred again and again in her thoughts. It explained everything, fitted in with everything, as no other reason did. His sudden indifference to his career, his furtive movement at his writing-table upon her appearance, his refusal to meet frankness with frankness could all thus be accounted for. His departure from the house was thus explained. He had not come up into his room next to hers; he had waited in his study for an hour; he had given her time to fall asleep; he had gone out. It was a woman then who had twisted the current of his life as she, Cynthia, could not, who had moved him to passion as she even that evening had failed to do. Cynthia raged in fury against herself for having so weakly betrayed herself. She sat in torture. Then her jealousy flamed up. _That_--no! Her pride must give way. If there was another woman in her story--why then the other woman must look to herself. Cynthia would fight. She hurried down-stairs into the study. She switched on the lights and tumbled hither and thither the papers on the writing-table for the one so swiftly hidden which should betray the other woman's name and her abode. But she found nothing to satisfy her. She looked round the room. From a drawer in a bureau against the wall Harry's keys had been dangling. That she had noticed; and the keys were gone now. She tried the drawer. It was locked. In that drawer then was hidden the key to his secret. So much knowledge at all events Cynthia was sure that she had gained. She went back to her room and lying in bed ran over all the names of her acquaintances, even of her friends. She was not in the mood to trust any of them, but she could not fix upon any of them either. One and all they were cats and treacherous. Cynthia was no longer afraid; she was simply furious; and her fury was not diminished when she heard the front-door open and