Then Mrs. Perks looked fixedly at Miriam, and stiffened herself into a very pillar of disapprobation. Then again she addressed Mr. Barton. "And now, sir, p'raps you'll explain this." "This," being, without doubt, indicative of Miriam, who, overcome as she was, had been unable to resist the grateful ease of a lounging chair close at hand. So it was not going to be such plain sailing after all. The landlady had, it seemed, no intention of foregoing her more purely feminine prerogative. For a moment Miriam had it in her mind to make a clean bolt of it even then. But her deliverer stepped forward. She saw him now, as he stood in the light, for the first time clearly. A shrivelled-up diminished countenance it was she thought. He was quite bald, too, and his mouth was hard--almost ascetic. His looks belied him surely, for he had been all kindness and solicitude for her in her plight. Divested of his fur coat, his evening dress accentuated the leanness of his figure, as it does accentuate either one tendency or the other. He was quite short--hardly as tall as she herself. She wondered why he should so have troubled himself about her. To judge from his face, gratitude for what she had done for him would not go for much. Could it be that he had some ulterior motive? Hardly--unless--unless; but her weary brain refused to follow up the train of thought it had conceived. As it turned out Mr. Barton made short work of the landlady and her required "explanation." Turning after her sharply, he crushed her volubility utterly by the adoption of a method nothing if not Socratian. "Tell me, Mrs. Perks," he said, "how long have you known me?" "Lawks a mercy, Mr. Bartons, sir, what a question! Why, maid, and wife, and widder, 'aven't I known you these forty years?" "Quite so. And during that time have you discovered me to have any strong inclination towards your sex?" "You 'ates 'em, Mr. Bartons, sir--'ates 'em, I know you does, and small blame to you. It ain't much as I thinks of 'em myself--it's mostly 'ussies they are." Then again Mrs. Perks' eyes rested on the unhappy Miriam. She was too attractive altogether, despite her pitiful state, to please the good widow. "That being so then, Mrs. Perks, you must allow me to say, 'don't be a fool!' Had I not had you in my mind as a thoroughly reliable and sensible woman, I should not have brought this young lady here." Mrs. Perks snorted. It was not quite so sonorous a snort as that with which the policeman had accompanied his repetition of the word "lady," but it meant exactly the same thing. There was a world of contempt in it. Mr. Barton continued: