Her answer was uttered with difficulty.

“What can it matter howl think of her?”

“That is the point.  To my mind it matters a great deal.  For instance, it seems to me a deplorable thing that you, her sister in more senses than one, should have kept apart from her when she so much needed a woman’s sympathy.  Of course, if you had no true sympathy to give her, there’s an end of it.  But it seems to me strange that it should be so.  Will you put aside conventionality, and tell me if you have any definite reason for acting as if you and she were strangers?”

Miriam was mute.  Her questioner waited, observing her.  At length she spoke with painful impulsiveness.

“I can’t talk with you on this subject.”

“I am very sorry to distress you,” Mallard continued, his voice growing almost harsh in its determination, “but talk of it we must, once for all.  Your brother came to my studio one morning, and demanded an explanation of something about his wife which he had heard from you.  He didn’t say that it came from you, but I have the conviction that it did.  Please to tell me if I am wrong.”

She kept an obstinate silence, sitting motionless, her hands tightly clasped together on her lap.

“If you don’t contradict me, I must conclude that I am right.  To speak plainly, it had come to his knowledge that Mrs. Elgar—­no; I will call her Cecily, as I used to do when she was a child—­that Cecily had visited my studio the evening before.  You told him of that.  How did you know of it, Mrs. Baske?”

Miriam answered in a hard, forced voice.

“I happened to be passing when she drove up in a cab.”

“I understand.  But you also told him how long she remained, and that when she left I accompanied her.  How could you be aware of those things?”

She seemed about to answer, but her voice failed.  She stood up, and began to move away.  Instantly Mallard was at her side.

“You must answer me,” he said, his voice shaking.  “If I detain you by force, you must answer me.”

Miriam turned to face him.  She stood splendidly at bay, her eyes gleaming, her cheeks bloodless, her lithe body in an attitude finer than she knew.  They looked into each other’s pupils, long, intensely, as if reading the heart there.  Miriam’s eyes were the first to fall.

“I waited till she came out again.”

“You waited all that time?  In the road?”

“Yes.”

“And when you heard that Cecily had Dot returned home that night, you believed that she had left her husband for ever?

“Yes.”

Mallard drew hack a little, and his voice softened.

“Forgive me for losing sight of civility.  Knowing this, it was perhaps natural that you should inform your brother of it.  You took it for granted that Cecily—­however unwise it was of her—­had come to tell me of her resolve to leave home, and that I, as her old friend, had seen her safely to the place where she had taken refuge?”