“A wise rule, Mademoiselle,” Hanaud agreed cordially. “A good many households are split from roof to cellar by the absence of just such a rule. The de Pouillacs then were Mademoiselle Betty’s friends.”
“Yes. As soon as Betty had gone,” Ann resumed, “I told Gaston that he might turn off the lights and go to bed whenever he liked; and I went upstairs to my own sitting-room, which is next to my bedroom. You can see the windows from here. There!”
They were in a group facing the back of the long house across the garden. To the right of the hall stretched the line of shuttered windows, with Betty’s bedroom just above. Ann pointed to the wing on the left of the hall and towards the road.
“I see. You are above the library, Mademoiselle,” said Hanaud.
“Yes. I had a letter to write,” Ann continued, and suddenly faltered. She had come upon some obstacle in the telling of her story which she had forgotten when she had uttered her cry in the library. She gasped. “Oh!” she murmured, and again “Oh!” in a low voice. She glanced anxiously at Betty, but she got no help from her at all. Betty was leaning forward with her elbows upon her knees and her eyes on the grass at her feet and apparently miles away in thought.
“Yes, Mademoiselle,” Hanaud asked smoothly.
“It was an important letter,” Ann went on again, choosing her words warily, much as yesterday at one moment in her interrogatory Betty herself had done—concealing something, too, just as Betty had done. “I had promised faithfully to write it. But the address was downstairs in Betty’s room. It was the address of a doctor,” and having said that, it seemed that she had cleared her obstacle, for she went on in a more easy and natural tone.
“You know what it is, Monsieur Hanaud. I had been playing tennis all the afternoon. I was pleasantly tired. There was a letter to be written with a good deal of care and the address was all the way downstairs. I said to myself that I would think out the terms of my letter first.”
And here Jim Frobisher, who had been shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, broke in upon the narrative.
“But what was this letter about and to what doctor?” he asked.
Hanaud swung round almost angrily.
“Oh, please!” he cried. “These things will all come to light of themselves in their due order, if we leave them alone and keep them in our memories. Let Mademoiselle tell her story in her own way,” and he was back at Ann Upcott again in a flash.
“Yes, Mademoiselle. You determined to think out the tenor of your letter.”
A hint of a smile glimmered upon the girl’s face for a second. “But it was an excuse really, an excuse to sit down in my big armchair, stretch out my legs and do nothing at all. You can guess what happened.”
Hanaud smiled and nodded.
“You fell fast asleep. Conscience does not keep young people, who are healthy and tired, awake,” he said.
“No, but it wakes up with them,” Ann returned, “and upbraids at once bitterly. I woke up rather chilly, as people do who have gone to sleep in their chairs. I was wearing a little thin frock of pale blue tulle—oh, a featherweight of a frock! Yes, I was cold and my conscience was saying, ‘Oh, big lazy one! And your letter? Where is it?’
“In a moment I was standing up and the next I was out of the room on the landing, and I was still half dazed with sleep. I closed my door behind me. It was just chance that I did it. The lights were all out on the staircase and in the hall below. The curtains were drawn across the windows. There was no moon that night. I was in a darkness so complete that I could not see the glimmer of my hand when I raised it close before my face.”
Hanaud let the end of his cigarette drop at his feet. Betty had raised her face and was staring at Ann with her mouth parted. For all of them the garden had disappeared with its sunlight and its roses and its singing birds. They were upon that staircase with Ann Upcott in the black night. The swift changes of colour in her cheeks and of expression in her eyes—the nervous vividness of her compelled them to follow with her.
“Yes, Mademoiselle?” said Hanaud quietly.
“The darkness didn’t matter to me,” she went on, with an amazement at her own fearlessness, now that she knew the after-history of that evening. “I am afraid now. I wasn’t then,” and Jim remembered how the night before in the garden her eyes had shifted from this dark spot to that in search of an intruder. Certainly she was afraid now! Her hands were clenched tight upon the arms of her chair, her lips shook.
“I knew every tread of the stairs. My hand was on the balustrade. There was no sound. It never occurred to me that anyone was awake except myself. I did not even turn on the light in the hall by the switch at the bottom of the stairs. I knew that there was a switch just inside the door of Betty’s room, and that was enough. I think, too, that I didn’t want to rouse anybody. At the foot of the stairs I turned right like a soldier. Exactly opposite to me across the hall was the door of Betty’s room. I crossed the hall with my hands out in front of me,” and Betty, as though she herself were crossing the hall, suddenly thrust both her hands out in front of her.
“Yes, one would have to do that,” she said slowly. “In the dark—with nothing but space in front of one—Yes!” and then she smiled as she saw
