Perhaps, thought Jane, he had suspected Clare.

She would see him to-morrow morning, and ask him.

3

Jane saw Gideon next day.  She rang him up, and he came over to Hampstead after tea.

It was the first time Jane had seen him alone for more than a month.  He looked thin and ill.

Jane loved him.  She had loved him through everything.  He might have killed Oliver; it made no difference to her caring for him.

But she hoped he hadn’t.

He came into the drawing-room.  Jane remembered that other night, when Oliver—­poor Oliver—­had been vexed to find him there.  Poor Oliver.  Poor Oliver.  But Jane couldn’t really care.  Not really, only gently, and in a way that didn’t hurt.  Not as if Gideon were dead and shut away from everything.  Not as if she herself were.

Jane didn’t pretend.  As Lady Pinkerton would say, the claims of Truth were inexorable.

Gideon came in quickly, looking grave and worried, as if he had something on his mind.

Jane said, ’Arthur, please tell me. Did you knock Oliver down that night?’

He stood and stared at her, looking astonished and startled.

Then he said, slowly, ’Oh, I see.  You mean, am I going to admit that I did, when I am accused....  If there’s no other way out, I am....  It will be all right, Jane,’ he said very gently.  ‘You needn’t be afraid.’

Jane didn’t understand him.

‘Then you did it,’ she said, and sat down.  She felt sick, and her head swam.

Gideon stood over her, tall and stooping, biting the nail of his middle finger.

‘You see,’ Jane said, ’I’d begun to hope last night that you hadn’t done it after all.’

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

Jane said, ’Clare told us that it happened—­that he fell—­after you had left the house.  So I hoped she might be speaking the truth, and that you hadn’t done it after all.  But if you did, we must go on thinking of ways out.’

‘If—­I—­did,’ Gideon said after her slowly.  ’You know I didn’t, Jane.  Why are you talking like this?  What’s the use, when I know, and you know, and you know that I know, the truth about it?  It can do no good.’

He was, for the first time, stern and angry with her.

‘The truth?’ Jane said.  ‘I wish you’d tell it me, Arthur.’

The truth.  If Gideon told her anything, it would be the truth, she knew.  He wasn’t like Clare, who couldn’t.

But he only looked at her oddly, and didn’t speak.  Jane looked back into his eyes, trying to read his mind, and so for a moment he stared down at her and she stared up at him.

Jane perceived that he had not done it.  Had he, then, guessed all this time that Clare had, and been trying to shield her?

Then, slowly, his face, which had been frowning and tense, changed and broke up.

‘Good God!’ he said.  ‘Tell me the truth, Jane.  It was you, wasn’t it?’