She had followed him in silence, and now she stood still, The key!  The key!  It seemed to be searing her flesh, burning through to her very heart.  She suddenly felt as if all the Fates were arrayed against her.  Why—­why—­why had she chosen that drawer to guard her secret?  Yet how could she have foreseen this?  A mist swam before her eyes.  Her new-found composure tottered.

“I—­have lost it,” she murmured.

“Lost it!” he echoed.

“I mean—­I mean—­” She was stammering now in open confusion—­“I must have laid it down somewhere.  I—­I shall find it again, no doubt.”

He turned fully round and looked at her.  She clasped her hands to still her quivering nerves.  This fresh ordeal was proving too much for her.

“I can’t help it,” she said, with white lips.  “I often mislay things.  I am careless, I know.  But I always find them again sooner or later.  I will have a look for it while you are dressing.”

Her words ran on almost meaninglessly.  She was speaking for the sake of speaking, because silence would have been too terrible to be borne, because if she had ceased to speak she must have screamed.  Even as it was, the fact that her husband said nothing whatever was driving her almost to distraction.

Suddenly she realized that he was waiting for her to stop, that her words were making no impression, that he was not so much as listening to them, his attention being focussed upon her and her alone.

She broke off in desperation.  She met his steady eyes.  “Don’t you—­don’t you believe me, Trevor?”

He did not instantly reply.  For one dreadful moment she thought that he was going to answer in the negative.  And then very deliberately he declined her direct challenge.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that you don’t know what you are saying.”

And with that he went slowly back to his own room, taking the jewel-case with him.  The door closed softly and she was left alone.

For many seconds thereafter Chris made no movement of any sort.  It was as if she were afraid to stir.  Her eyes were wide, gazing straight before her, as though fascinated by some scene of terror.

She moved at last stiffly, went to the window, drew a long, deep breath.  She asked herself no questions of any sort.  There was no need.  For the first time in her life she was face to face with her own soul, beyond all possibility of self-deception.

The child Chris was gone for ever, the woman Chris remained, a woman with a tragic secret that must never be revealed.  She knew now why she had fought so desperately to keep that episode of Valpre from her husband’s knowledge.  She only marvelled that the reason had never come home to her before.  She knew now why she had always shrunk inwardly from the searching of his eyes.  She had always dreaded that he might see too much, even that same secret of which she herself must have been vaguely conscious for years.