She laughed her hard little laugh, and shot a look at him over her shoulder.

“You do know something, some little thing it may be, but something that might help me.”

“About Absalom, or about someone else?”

“About whoever you saw him with.”

Hartley pushed his pony alongside of hers, but her face revealed nothing, and was quite expressionless.

“Whoever I saw him with?” she echoed reflectively.  “Ah, but it is so long ago, Mr. Hartley, I can’t even remember now whether I was out or not that evening.”

“You are only playing with me,” said Hartley a little irritably.  “The policeman on duty at the cross-roads below Paradise Street saw you.”

Her face became suddenly so drawn and startled that Hartley regretted his words almost as he spoke them.

“Wait a minute, Mr. Hartley,” she said, in a strained, hard voice.  “You have to explain to me why you have asked your men questions connected with me.”

“I did not ask questions; I was told.”

She pulled up her pony, and, turning her head away from him, looked out silently over the dip of ground below them.  Hartley did not break her silence.  He saw that he had come close to some deep emotion, and he watched her curiously, but Mrs. Wilder, even if she was conscious of his look, appeared quite indifferent to it.  He could form no idea along what road her silent concentration led her; but he knew that she pursued an idea that was compelling and strong.  He knew enough of her to know that even her silence was not the silence that arises out of lack of subject for talk, but that it meant something as definite and clear as though she spoke direct words to him.

The Head of the Police would have given much at that moment to have been able to penetrate her thoughts, but he only stared at her with his blue eyes a little wider open than usual, and waited for her to speak.  She looked before her steadily, but not with the eyes of a woman who dreams; Mrs. Wilder was thinking definitely, and while Hartley waited, her mind travelled at speed across years and came to a halt at the moment where she now found herself, and from that moment she looked out forcefully into the future.

Usually, in the tragic instants of life there is very little time for thought before the need for action forces the will, with relentless hands.  Clarice Wilder knew as well as she knew anything that her position was one of some peril, and that much more than she could weigh or measure at that moment lay beyond the next spoken word.  She was telling herself to be careful, steadying her nerve and reining in a desire to pour out a flood of circumstantial evidence, calculated to convince the Head of the Police.

If there is one thing more than another that the man or the woman driven against the ropes should avoid, it is prolixity; the snare that catches craft in its own net.  Clarice Wilder desired to be overpowering, redundant and extreme in the wordy proof of her innocence of purpose that evening of July the 29th, but she held back and waited steadfastly until she was quite sure of herself again, and then she turned her head and glanced at Hartley with a smile.