"So am I," he answered carelessly. "It's the same on both sides, I imagine--merely a matter of gain." "It doesn't only amount to that with you," she exclaimed sharply, and her eyes darkened in her pale face. "No. There are other considerations; but it is not necessary to go into them." His tone was quietly aloof; it almost seemed that he would remind her his doings were no concern of hers. She withdrew within herself; and for the space of a few seconds there was silence between them. He broke it. "You did not tell me who the man was who entered your house that night," he said. "He was a stranger to me," she replied. "I had not, to my knowledge, seen him before." "It was not Van Bleit?" "No." She met his eyes steadily. "Why should you suppose it might be?" "I would warn you against him," he said curtly, "if I might presume to give you advice." "Thank you," she answered coldly. "I do not think I stand in need of advice. And your warning is quite unnecessary." He drew himself up stiffly as a man might who realises a rebuff. "I beg your pardon," he said. He looked at her fixedly in the pause that followed his brief apology, and his eyes were hard. "I have heard what I came to hear. It won't be of great service to me, but I scarcely expected to learn more, and I am obliged to you for receiving me. I will now relieve you of the embarrassment of my presence." He bowed to her with formal politeness. "Good afternoon," he said. "With your permission, I will leave by the window. I see a path which leads direct to the gate." He turned his back towards her and stepped through the aperture on to the stoep. She followed him with her eyes, those beautiful sun-flecked eyes shadowed with the stirring of memory; but she made no move to detain him. Not until after he had left her did she remember that she had said no word in parting. She had simply let him go in silence out of her sight--out of her life. He had come into her life that afternoon, a spectre of the past, and, like a spectre, he had vanished, leaving only another memory to add to those that already disturbed her peace. She stood quite motionless, gazing, not out through the window whence he had disappeared, but at the place where he had stood, and as she gazed it was suddenly borne in upon her that an opportunity had come to her with the presence of this man, and she had missed it. She had travelled nearly six thousand miles for this,--to realise when it was too late that she had missed her opportunity. It happens thus frequently: we refuse to grasp the event when it entails the smallest sacrifice of self. Could she have humbled her pride sufficiently, she might have had this man's destiny in her hands and have fashioned it to brave issues.