“Oh, no! Not when she wore the grey dress.” He had risen and was standing by the bed now, he seemed anxious, almost imploring. “Think again. Shut your eyes and think again. Surely she had the blue ribbon.” I shut my eyes as he bade me. Then opened them and stared at him. “But how did you know?” “Go on. There was a blue ribbon in her hair?” “The first time I saw her. The next time her hair was hanging down her back, two great plaits of fair hair, and she had on a blue dressing-gown.” “With a white collar like a fine handkerchief, showing her slender throat.” “How well you knew her clothes.” “There was a sense of fitness about her, an exquisite sense of fitness. She would not have worn her hair down with that grey dress.” “You know I really did see her.” “Of course. Go on. Tell me exactly what she said, word for word.” “About my bad style.” “About your good sense of comradeship with her.” “She said I would write the story. Hers and Gabriel Stanton’s.” I told him all she had said, word for word as well as I could remember it, keeping my eyes shut, speaking slowly, remembering well. “She told me of the letters and diary, the notes, chapter headings, all she had prepared....” I turned my head away, sank down amongst the pillows, and turned my head away. I didn’t want him to see my disappointment, to know that I had found nothing. Now I recognised my weakness, that I was spent with feverish nights and pain. “I can’t talk any more.” He put his hand upon my pulse. “Your pulse is quite strong.” “I am not,” I said shortly. I wished Ella would come back. “You looked for them?” I did not answer. “I am so sorry. Blundering fool that I am. You looked, and looked ... that is why you kept me at arm’s length, would not see me, wanted to be alone. You were searching. Why didn’t I think of it before? But how did I know she would come to you, confide in you?” He was talking to himself now, seemed to forget me and my grave illness. “I might have thought of it though. From the first I pictured you two together. I have them. I took them ... didn’t you guess?” I forgot the extreme weakness of which I had complained, and caught hold of his coat sleeve, a little breathless. “You took them ... stole them?” “Yes. If you put it that way. Who had a better right? I knew everything. Her father, her people, nothing, or very little. And she had not wished them to know.” “She was going to write the story, whatever it was; to publish it.”