Her dry logic was unanswerable. Yet a man does not expect logic from an elderly waiting-woman. He passed a hand over his eyes and held it there for a long time, while Myra sat patient and unemotional. He understood nothing of her motives. For the moment he did not seek to understand them. One fact alone mattered. Olivia did not know. She had not, with horrible contempt, left him to die like a dog. By the thought of such a possibility he had wronged her. She might, with every reason, desire never to set eyes on him again—but of active cruelty he should have known her incapable. Presently he withdrew his hand and turned to Myra. “My head’s not altogether right yet,” he said half-apologetically. “I can quite believe it,” said Myra. “Why you should bother with me, I don’t understand,” he said. “Neither do I,” she replied in her disconcerting way. “If you had died I shouldn’t have been sorry. For her sake. Now you’re not going to die, I’m glad. For yours.” “Thank you,” said he with a note of irony. And then after a pause: “How is your mistress?” “She is quite well, sir.” “And happy?” “Begging your pardon, sir,” said Myra stiffly, “but I’ve not come here to be asked questions. I’ve no intention of your using me as a go-between.” “It never entered my head,” he declared. “It might,” said Myra. “So I give you warning. Whatever go-between-ing I do will be to keep you apart from Mrs. Triona.” “Then why are you worrying about me?” he asked. “Because I’ve found you in affliction and I’m a Christian woman.” Neither of them understood the other. He said suddenly with a flash of the old fire: “Will you swear you’ll never tell your mistress where I am?” A faint light flickered in her pale eyes. “I’ll swear if you like. But haven’t you taken in what I’ve been telling you all the time?” “So long as we can trust each other—that is all that matters.” “You can trust me all right,” said Myra. They talked the ground over again for a while longer. Then he grew tired with the strain, and the nurse put an end to the interview. But Myra came the next day and the day after that, and Triona grew to long for her visit. He became aware of a crabbed kindness in her attitude towards him side by side with her jealous love for Olivia. She was anxious for his welfare within grimly prescribed limitations. His immediate future concerned her. What did he purpose to do with his invalid-dom after his discharge from the hospital? He himself, at this stage, had no notion. He confided to her the despair of his active life. The motor-lorry had wrecked his hopes of salvation. He told her the whole Boronowski story. Myra nodded; but faithful to the part she had chosen, she said nothing of Boronowski’s letter to Major Olifant. Only by keeping the lives of the ill-fated pair in tightly sealed and non-communicable compartments, could she be true to an ethical code formulated by many definite sorrows and many vague, but none the less poignant, spiritual conflicts.