I stood between them like a statue.

“No, stop here a little longer,” I said, waving my hand towards him imperiously.  “I haven’t yet heard all it’s right for me to hear....  Auntie, you mistake.  I’m a woman at last.  I see what everything means.  I’m beginning to remember again.  For four years that hateful Picture has haunted me night and day.  I could never shut my eyes for a minute without seeing it.  I’ve longed to know what it all meant; but whenever I’ve asked, I’ve been repressed like a baby.  I’m a baby no longer:  I feel myself a woman.  What the Inspector here has told me already, half opens my eyes:  I must have them opened altogether now.  I can’t stop at this point.  I’m going back to Woodbury.”

Aunt Emma clung to me still harder in a perfect agony of passionate terror.

“To Woodbury, my darling!” she cried.  “Going back!  Oh, Una, it’ll kill you!”

“I think not,” the Inspector answered, with a very quiet smile.  “Miss Callingham has recovered, I venture to say, far more profoundly than you imagine.  This repression, our medical adviser tells us, has been bad for her.  If she’s allowed to visit freely the places connected with her earlier life, it may all return again to her; and the ends of Justice may thus at last be served for us.  I notice already one hopeful symptom:  Miss Callingham speaks of going back to Woodbury.”

Aunt Emma looked up at him, horrified.  All her firmness was gone now.

“It’s you who’ve put this into her head!” she exclaimed, in a ferment of horror.  “She’d never thought of it herself.  You’ve made her do it!”

“On the contrary, auntie,” I answered, feeling my ground grow surer under me every moment as I spoke, “this gentleman has never even by the merest hint suggested such an idea to my mind.  It occurred to me quite spontaneously.  I must find out now who was my father’s murderer!  All the Inspector has told me seems to arouse in my brain some vague, forgotten chords.  It brings back to me faint shadows.  I feel sure if I went to Woodbury I should remember much more.  And then, you must see for yourself, there’s another reason, dear, that ought to make me go.  Nobody but I ever saw the murderer’s face.  It’s a duty imposed upon me from without, as it were, never to rest again in peace till I’ve recognised him.”

Aunt Emma collapsed into an easy-chair.  Her face was deadly pale.  Her ringers trembled.

“If you go, Una,” she cried, playing nervously with her gloves, “I must go with you too!  I must take care of you:  I must watch over you!”

I took her quivering hand in mine and stroked it gently.  It was a soft and delicate white little hand, all marked inside with curious ragged scars that I’d known and observed ever since I first knew her.  I held it in silence for a minute.  Somehow I felt our positions were reversed to-day.  This interview had suddenly brought out what I know now to be my own natural and inherent character—­self-reliant, active, abounding in initiative.  For four years I had been as a child in her hands, through mere force of circumstances.  My true self came out now and asserted its supremacy.