They stayed with her all that afternoon; for their time, they said, was getting short; and when, about six o’clock, Milly got up to go she took Agatha aside and said that, if Agatha didn’t mind, she would leave Harding with her for a little while. She knew he wanted to talk to her. Agatha proposed that they should walk up the hill through the wood. They went in a curious silence and constraint; and it was not until they had got into the wood and were shut up in it together that he spoke. “I think my wife told you I had something to say to you?” “Yes, Harding,” she said. “What is it?” “Well, it’s this—first of all, I want to thank you. I know what you’re doing for me.” “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know. I thought Milly wasn’t going to tell you.” “She didn’t tell me.” Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course, he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to shield her. “I mean,” he went on, “that whether she told me or not, it’s no matter; I knew.” “You—knew?” “I knew that something was happening, and I knew it wasn’t the place. Places never make any difference. I only go to ’em because Milly thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place—from my peculiar point of view, mind you—was simply beastly. I couldn’t have stood another night of it.” “Well.” “Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is, I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you’d done something. I half hoped you might say something, but you never did.” “One oughtn’t to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I didn’t want you to know.” “I didn’t know what you did. I don’t know now, though Milly tried to tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time.” “It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was.” “What can I think?” “Think as I do; think—think—” She stopped herself. She was aware of the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had denied, the supernatural. “It isn’t a question of thinking,” she said at last. “Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?” “No; it isn’t believing either. It’s knowing. Either you know it or you don’t know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you mustn’t think it’s me.” “I rather like to. Why shouldn’t I?” She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious expression there as of incipient terror. “Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or—” His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her. “Or me.” “You?” he murmured gently, pitifully almost. “Yes, me. Or even—well, one doesn’t quite know where the harm might end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you—to work it that way—so that you might find the secret and do it for yourself.” “I can’t do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I’ll take any view you like of it, so long as you’ll keep on at me.” “Of course I’ll keep on.”