It was a relief to Conquest to get up, scratch another match, and light his cigar at last, turning his back so that it should not be seen that his fingers trembled.  When he was sure of himself he faced about again, taking his seat.

“It’s the most amazing story I ever heard,” was his only comment, in response to Ford’s look of expectation.

“I hoped it might strike you as something more than—­amazing,” Ford ventured, after a minute’s waiting for a more appreciative word.

“Perhaps it will when I get my breath.  You must give me time for that.  Do you actually tell me that she kept you in her studio for weeks——?”

“Three weeks and four days, to be exact.”

“And that she furnished you with food and clothing——?”

“And money—­but I paid that back.”

“And got you away in that ingenious fashion——?”

“Just as I’ve told you.”

“Amazing!  Simply amazing!  And,” he added, with some bitterness, “you came back here—­and you and she together—­took us all in.”

Ford drew his cigar from his lips, and, turning in his chair, faced Conquest in an attitude and with a look which could not be misinterpreted.

“I came back here, and took you all in—­if you like.  Miss Strange had nothing to do with it.  She didn’t even expect me.”

The last sentence gave Conquest the opening he was looking for, but now that he had it, he hesitated to make use of it.  In his memory were the very words Miriam Strange had stammered out to him in the sort of confession no woman ever makes willingly:  “Things happened ... such as don’t generally happen ... and even if he never comes ...  I’d rather go on waiting for him ... uselessly.”  It was all growing clear to him, and yet not so clear but that there was time even now to let the matter drop into the limbo of things it is best not to know too much about.  It was against his better judgment, then—­his better judgment as a barrister-at-law—­that he found himself saying: 

“She didn’t expect you at that day and date, perhaps:  but she probably looked for you some time.”

“Possibly; but if so, I know little or nothing about it.”

The reply, delivered with a certain dignified force of intention, recalled Conquest to a sense of his own interests.  He had too often counselled his clients to let sleeping dogs lie, not to be aware of the advantage of doing it himself; and so, restraining his jealous curiosity, he turned the conversation back to the evidence of Amalia Gramm.

During the next half-hour he manifested that talent—­partly native and partly born of practice—­which he had often commended in himself, of talking about one thing and thinking of another.  His exposition of the line to be adopted in Ford’s defence was perfectly lucid, when all the while he was saying to himself that this was the man whom Miriam Strange had waited for through eight romantic years.