I am not really pig-headed.  I may not give way gracefully to such an opponent as Jervaise, but I do not stupidly persist in a personal opinion through sheer obstinacy.  And up to Jervaise’s last statement, his general deductions were, I admitted to myself, not only within the bounds of probability but, also, within distance of affording a tolerable explanation of Anne’s diplomacy during our interview.  But—­and I secretly congratulated myself on having exercised a subtler intuition in this one particular, at least—­I did not believe that Anne expected us to find Brenda at the Hall on our return.  I remembered that anxious pucker of the brow and the pathetic insistence on the belief—­or might it not better be described as a hope?—­that Brenda had done nothing final.

“You haven’t made a bad case,” I conceded; “but I differ as to your last inference.”

“You don’t think we shall find Brenda at home?”

“I do not,” I replied aggressively.

I expected him to bear me down under a new weight of argument founded on the psychology of Anyone, and I was startled when he suddenly dropped the lawyer and let out a whole-hearted “Damnation,” that had a ring of fine sincerity.

I changed my tone instantly in response to that agreeably human note.

“I may be quite mistaken, of course,” I said.  “I hope to goodness I am.  By the way, do you know if she has taken any luggage with her?”

“Can’t be sure,” Jervaise said.  “Olive’s been looking and there doesn’t seem to be anything missing, but we’ve no idea what things she brought down from town with her.  If she’d been making plans beforehand...”

We came out of the wood at that point in our discussion, and almost at the same moment the last barrier of cloud slipped away from before the moon.  She was in her second quarter, and seemed to be indolently rolling down towards the horizon, the whole pose of the scene giving her the effect of being half-recumbent.

I turned and looked at Jervaise and found him facing me with the full light of the moon on his face.  He was frowning, not with the domineering scowl of the cross-examining counsel, but with a perplexed, inquiring frown that revealed all the boy in him.

Once at Oakstone he had got into a serious scrape that had begun in bravado and ended by a public thrashing.  He had poached a trout from the waters of a neighbouring landowner, who had welcomed the opportunity to make himself more than usually objectionable.  And on the morning before his thrashing, Jervaise had come into my study and confessed to me that he was dreading the coming ordeal.  He was not afraid of the physical pain, he told me, but of the shame of the thing.  We were near to becoming friends that morning.  He confessed to no one but me.  But when the affair was over—­he bore himself very well—­he resumed his usual airs of superiority, and snubbed me when I attempted to sympathise with him.