VI

Next day, and for several days following, Henriot kept out of the path of Lady Statham and her nephew.  The acquaintanceship had grown too rapidly to be quite comfortable.  It was easy to pretend that he took people at their face value, but it was a pose; one liked to know something of antecedents.  It was otherwise difficult to “place” them.  And Henriot, for the life of him, could not “place” these two.  His Subconsciousness brought explanation when it came—­but the Subconsciousness is only temporarily active.  When it retired he floundered without a rudder, in confusion.

With the flood of morning sunshine the value of much she had said evaporated.  Her presence alone had supplied the key to the cipher.  But while the indigestible portions he rejected, there remained a good deal he had already assimilated.  The discomfort remained; and with it the grave, unholy reality of it all.  It was something more than theory.  Results would follow—­if he joined them.  He would witness curious things.

The force with which it drew him brought hesitation.  It operated in him like a shock that numbs at first by its abrupt arrival, and needs time to realise in the right proportions to the rest of life.  These right proportions, however, did not come readily, and his emotions ranged between sceptical laughter and complete acceptance.  The one detail he felt certain of was this dreadful thing he had divined in Vance.  Trying hard to disbelieve it, he found he could not.  It was true.  Though without a shred of real evidence to support it, the horror of it remained.  He knew it in his very bones.

And this, perhaps, was what drove him to seek the comforting companionship of folk he understood and felt at home with.  He told his host and hostess about the strangers, though omitting the actual conversation because they would merely smile in blank miscomprehension.  But the moment he described the strong black eyes beneath the level eyelids, his hostess turned with a start, her interest deeply roused:  “Why, it’s that awful Statham woman,” she exclaimed, “that must be Lady Statham, and the man she calls her nephew.”

“Sounds like it, certainly,” her husband added.  “Felix, you’d better clear out.  They’ll bewitch you too.”

And Henriot bridled, yet wondering why he did so.  He drew into his shell a little, giving the merest sketch of what had happened.  But he listened closely while these two practical old friends supplied him with information in the gossiping way that human nature loves.  No doubt there was much embroidery, and more perversion, exaggeration too, but the account evidently rested upon some basis of solid foundation for all that.  Smoke and fire go together always.