In the act of reconstructing her experience she paused frequently. So deep was her abstraction that she was already standing quietly in the very ante-room she had recalled, before she was fully conscious that she had reached it. She looked up with a sudden start, and gave a single rapid, comprehensive glance around the apartment. The three doors were there-closed and forbidding, as before. The coloured light of the hall had given the place to a sort of grey twilight…

It was all perfectly real to her senses, yet she had a disquieting feeling that she was wandering in a dream-house, where anything might happen. The excitement which had so far sustained her now began to ebb, and she drew frightened. She had no intention of retreating, but she liked the look of those doors less than ever. How she had plucked up courage to open one of them on the last occasion, she could not conceive…It had been the left-hand one. As it was useless to repeat that experience, she ought really now to try the middle door-if only she could bring herself to do so. The other, on the right, she dismissed with a little emphatic shiver. Its appearance scared her. She did not know why, but merely to be standing in front of it was formidable. She had an idea all the time that it was on the point of swinging solemnly open.

The headache had departed, but her nerves were in a low condition. She kept starting; her heart was hammering away; flush after flush came to her cheeks. Then a sudden panic possessed her. She was sure that that awful door was about to open. She imagined that something was waiting just behind it, preparing to glide out, to intercept her from the stairs. Hardly knowing what she did, she clutched the handle of the middle door…It opened. She passed in quickly and breathlessly, and hurriedly closed it again from within.

She stood in a small, wainscoted room, unfurnished except for a carved wooden couch that was against the further wall. The floor was bare, and the walls were undecorated. The apartment was duskily lighted from overhead, since not a single side-window existed.

Notwithstanding its emptiness, there was an atmosphere of stately opulence in the little chamber, which could only be accounted for by the exquisiteness of its dark, naked timber. Merely to be in it impressed her with a sense of personal dignity; it was like entering the private cabinet of a nobleman…She fancied that the presence of that solitary couch seemed to point to the room's being primarily intended as a place for intimate meetings…though that would be queer, too!…

She sat down, but in an erect attitude and without relaxing her muscles. She prepared herself to spring up suddenly again, if need were. In fact, she felt far from easy in her mind. To be sitting alone in that mysterious room, behind a closed door, which might at any minute be opened-the situation was not precisely tranquillising…What was she waiting for, and why did she not retire, since she had seen all there was to see? She asked herself the question, and found no satisfactory reason for remaining, but it was as if she were in a state of enchantment-she continued sitting, watching the door with nervous anxiety. Her sensitive fingers were playing time along the long, delicate scarf she wore round her neck. She dared not acknowledge to herself that she was waiting for that door to open, and yet perhaps she was.

She uttered a faint cry, and half-rose from the couch. The door was opening…Her terrified eyes met those of Judge!

She got up altogether, and stumbled towards him. Judge closed the door behind him quickly and quietly; then, coming up to her, he supported her with his arm to the couch, and both sat down. Isbel could not stare at him enough. He seemed younger, and different. It might have been the effect of the dim light, but it was too remarkable not to be noticed.

"How have you got here?" she asked, as soon as she could command her tongue.

He did not reply immediately, but continued gazing at her with a sort of stern kindness. His face was different. It was less sallow, less respectable, more powerful and energetic…and always younger. He looked no more that five-and forty.

"I've come straight from the East Room," he said at last. "I mustn't stop-the others are expecting me back. I left them in the drawing-room, while I returned to lock the East Room and bring away the key. I had forgotten to do so. When I got there-a minute ago-I saw the stairs, and here I am."

"But where are we?"

"In a strange place, I fear. I can't conceive how you have found your way up."

"I came up from the hall…What is that third door?"

"I've never ventured to enter. Perhaps some other time we will try it together. We haven't leisure now."

Isbel turned pale, and removed herself a little away from him.

"That's a strange thing to say. You know it's impossible."

"How do you regard this meeting, then?" He eyed her gravely.

"As accidental…Tell me-is this really a part of the house, or are we dreaming?"

"Possibly neither. I've been here many times in former years, and I'm still no wiser than on the first occasion. You may not be aware that in ten minutes' time neither of us will remember a single detail of this meeting?"

"I know. I also have been here before, though not in this room."

"Then you have been deceiving me?"

"By force of necessity."

"Yes, you could not have acted differently. Those stairs have an irresistible attraction. I know the feeling, and how everything else has to give way."

Isbel still toyed with her scarf. "Did you guess that I was practising a stratagem on you?"

"No, it didn't occur to me, although I did not altogether understand your anxiety to have the house."

"Now I've sunk hopelessly in your estimation?"

"No-but you have succeeded in depressing me. I dreamt of friendship, and I wake up to find it's nothing of the sort."

She looked at him with a strange smile.

"When you came in just now, and found me sitting here, what passed through your mind?"

"I was unaware that you were here as the result of a fixed purpose. I thought it was your first visit, and I presumed to imagine that fate had brought us together. Pardon my audacity."

"And why do you suppose that your friendship is a matter of such indifference to me?"

"Because you have used it as an instrument for your designs."

"It is not a matter of indifference to me," she said, in a very low voice…"As everything is to be forgotten so soon, there's no object in my concealing my true feelings. There is such a thing as honour. I am to marry another man, and all my love is for him. But though I can't and mustn't love you, you have already influenced my life very strongly, and I feel that you will go on doing so more and more. I don't wish our friendship to die away-on the contrary, I wish it to become richer and more intimate. I've deceived you in other things, but not in that."

Judge's manner appeared curiously humble. "If I have had some influence on your life, you have inspired me to new life altogether. Before I met you, I was a lost man. I was wifeless and friendless…I don't think I could go on without your friendship. I'm willing to pay higher prices than the one you've exacted."

They looked at each other in silence for a minute.

"We shall understand each other better after this," said Isbel, softly. "Even if our minds forget, something in us will remember."

"Perhaps; but give me something to remember by."

After a moment's reflection, Isbel slowly unwound the silk scarf from her neck. "Take this, then!"

He glanced at her before accepting it. "Won't its absence be remarked?"

"It's mine to dispose of, I think. I'm not giving anything with it except respect and kindness."

Judge held out his hand, took the scarf, and, after carefully, almost reverently folding it into small compass, bestowed it in the breast-pocket of his coat.