“What do you want me to do, Peter?”

“Chuck the ball back to me if it runs out of the circle. Not obviously. Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth.”

“That sounds easy.”

“It is-for you. That’s what I love you for. Didn’t you know? Well, we can’t stop to argue about it now; they’ll think we’re conspiring about something.”

She released his arm and went into the room ahead of him, feeling suddenly embarrassed and looking, in consequence, defiant. The coffee was already on the table, and the S.C.R. were gathered about it, helping themselves. She saw Miss Barton advance upon Peter, with a courteous offer of refreshment on her lips but the light of determination in her eye. Harriet did not for the moment care what happened to Peter. He had given her a new bone to worry. She provided herself with coffee and a cigarette, and retired with them and the bone into a corner. She had often wondered, in a detached kind of way, what it was that Peter valued in her and had apparently valued from that first day when she had stood in the dock and spoken for her own life. Now that she knew, she thought that a more unattractive pair of qualities could seldom have been put forward as an excuse for devotion.

“But do you really feel comfortable about it. Lord Peter?”

“No-I shouldn’t recommend it as a comfortable occupation. But is your or my or anybody’s comfort of very great importance?”

Miss Barton probably took that for flippancy; Harriet recognized the ruthless voice that had said, “What does it matter if it hurts…? Let them fight it out… Unattractive; but if he meant what he said, it explained a great many things. Those were qualities that could be recognized under the most sordid conditions… “Detachment… if you ever find a person who likes you because of it, that liking is sincere.” That was Miss de Vine; and Miss de Vine was sitting not very far away, her eyes, behind their thick glasses, fixed on Peter with a curious, calculating look.

Conversations, carried on in groups, were beginning to falter and fall into silence. People were sitting down. The voices of Miss Allison and Miss Stevens rose into prominence. They were discussing some collegiate question, and they were doing it intently and desperately. They called upon Miss Burrows to give an opinion. Miss Shaw turned to Miss Chilperic and made a remark about the bathing at “Spinsters’ Splash.” Miss Chilperic replied elaborately-too elaborately; her answer took too long and attracted attention; she hesitated, became confused, and stopped speaking. Miss Lydgate, with a troubled face, was listening to an anecdote that Mrs. Goodwin was telling about her little boy; in the middle of it, Miss Hillyard, who was within earshot, rose pointedly, stabbed out her cigarette on a distant ash-tray, and moved slowly, and as though despite herself, to a window-seat close to where Miss Barton was still standing. Harriet could see her angry, smouldering glance fix itself on Peter’s bent head and then jerk away across the quad, only to return again. Miss Edwards, close to Harriet and a little in front other on a low chair, had her hands set squarely and rather mannishly on her knees, and was leaning forward; she had the air of waiting for something. Miss Pyke, on her feet, lighting a cigarette, was apparently looking for an opportunity to engage Peter’s attention; she appeared eager and interested, and more at her ease than most of the others. The Dean, curled on a humpty, was frankly listening to what Peter and Miss Barton were saying. They were all listening, really, and at the same time most of them were trying to pretend that he was there as an ordinary guest-that he was not an enemy-not a spy. They were trying to prevent him from becoming openly the centre of attention as he was already the centre of consciousness.

The Warden, seated in a deep chair near the fireplace, gave nobody any help. One by one, the spurts of talk failed and died, leaving the one tenor floating, like a solo instrument executing a cadenza when the orchestra has fallen silent:

“The execution of the guilty is unpleasant-but not nearly so disturbing as the slaughter of the innocents. If you are out for my blood, won’t you allow me to hand you a more serviceable weapon?”

He glanced round and, finding that everybody but Miss Pyke and themselves was sitting down silent, made a brief, interrogative pause, which looked like politeness, but which Harriet mentally classed as “good theatre.”

Miss Pyke led the way to a large sofa near Miss Hillyard’s window-seat and said, as she settled herself in the corner of it:

“Do you mean the murderer’s victims?”

“No,” said Peter, “I meant my own victims.”

He sat down between Miss Pyke and Miss Barton, and went on in a pleasantly conversational tone:

“For example; I happened to find out that a young woman had murdered an old one for her money. It didn’t matter much: the old woman was dying in any case, and the girl (though she didn’t know that) would have inherited the money in any case. As soon as I started to meddle, the girl set to work again, lulled two innocent people to cover her tracks and murderously attacked three others. Finally she killed herself. If I’d left her alone, there might have been only one death instead of four.”

“Good gracious!” said Miss Pyke. “But the woman would have been at large.”

“Oh, yes. She wasn’t a nice woman, and she had a nasty influence on certain people. But who killed those other two innocents-she or society?”

“They were killed,” said Miss Barton, “by her fear of the death-penalty. If the unfortunate woman had been medically treated, they and she would still be alive today.”

“I told you it was a good weapon. But it isn’t as simple as all that. If she hadn’t killed those others, we should probably never have caught her, and so far from being medically treated she would be living in prosperity-and incidentally corrupting one or two people’s minds, if you think that of any importance.”

“You are suggesting, I think,” said the Warden, while Miss Barton rebelliously grappled with this problem, “that those innocent victims died for the people; sacrificed to a social principle.”

“At any rate, to your social principles,” said Miss Barton.

“Thank you. I thought you were going to say, to my inquisitiveness.”

“I might have done so,” said Miss Barton, frankly. “But you lay claim to a principle, so we’ll stick to that.”

“Who were the other three people attacked?” asked Harriet. (She had no fancy to let Miss Barton get away with it too easily.)

“A lawyer, a colleague of mine and myself. But that doesn’t prove that I have any principles. I’m quite capable of getting killed for the fun of the thing. Who isn’t?”

“I know,” said the Dean. “It’s funny that we get so solemn about murders and executions and mind so little about taking risks in motoring and swimming and climbing mountains and so on. I suppose we do prefer to die for the fun of the thing.”

“The social principle seems to be,” suggested Miss Pyke, “that we should die for our own fun and not other people’s.”

“Of course I admit,” said Miss Barton, rather angrily, “that murder must be prevented and murderers kept from doing further harm. But they ought not to be punished and they certainly ought not to be killed.”

“I suppose they ought to be kept in hospitals at vast expense, along with other unfit specimens,” said Miss Edwards. “Speaking as a biologist, I must say I think public money might be better employed. What with the number of imbeciles and physical wrecks we allow to go about and propagate their species, we shall end by devitalizing whole nations.”

“Miss Schuster-Slatt would advocate sterilization,” said the Dean.

“They’re trying it in Germany, I believe,” said Miss Edwards.

“Together”, said Miss Hillyard, “with the relegation of woman to her proper place in the home.”