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Once or twice, in idle mood, I sought the street again, but without success; and the thing would, I expect, have faded from my memory, but that one evening, on my way home from Paddington, I came across the woman in the Harrow Road. There was no mistaking her. She almost touched me as she came out of a fishmonger’s shop, and unconsciously, at the beginning, I found myself following her. This time I noticed the turnings, and five minutes’ walking brought us to the street. Half a dozen times I must have been within a hundred yards of it. I lingered at the corner. She had not noticed me, and just as she reached the house a man came out of the shadows beyond the lamp-post and joined her.

I was due at a bachelor gathering that evening, and after dinner, the affair being fresh in my mind, I talked about it. I am not sure, but I think it was in connection with a discussion on Maeterlinck. It was that sudden lifting of the blind that had caught hold of me. As if, blundering into an empty theatre, I had caught a glimpse of some drama being played in secret. We passed to other topics, and when I was leaving a fellow guest asked me which way I was going. I told him, and, it being a fine night, he proposed that we should walk together. And in the quiet of Harley Street he confessed that his desire had not been entirely the pleasure of my company.

“It is rather curious,” he said, “but today there suddenly came to my remembrance a case that for nearly eleven years I have never given a thought to. And now, on top of it, comes your description of that woman’s face. I am wondering if it can be the same.”

“It was the eyes,” I said, “that struck me as so remarkable.”

“It was the eyes that I chiefly remember her by,” he replied. “Would you know the street again?”

We walked a little while in silence.

“It may seem, perhaps, odd to you,” I answered, “but it would trouble me, the idea of any harm coming to her through me. What was the case?”

“You can feel quite safe on that point,” he assured me. “I was her counsel–that is, if it is the same woman. How was she dressed?”

I could not see the reason for his question. He could hardly expect her to be wearing the clothes of eleven years ago.

“I don’t think I noticed,” I answered. “Some sort of a blouse, I suppose.” And then I recollected. “Ah, yes, there was something uncommon,” I added. “An unusually broad band of velvet, it looked like, round her neck.”

“I thought so,” he said. “Yes. It must be the same.”

We had reached Marylebone Road, where our ways parted.

“I will look you up to-morrow afternoon, if I may,” he said. “We might take a stroll round together.”

He called on me about half-past five, and we reached the street just as the one solitary gas-lamp had been lighted. I pointed out the house to him, and he crossed over and looked at the number.

“Quite right,” he said, on returning. “I made inquiries this morning. She was released six weeks ago on ticket-of-leave.”

He took my arm.

“Not much use hanging about,” he said. “The blind won’t go up to-night. Rather a clever idea, selecting a house just opposite a lamp-post.”

He had an engagement that evening; but later on he told me the story–that is, so far as he then knew it.

* * *

It was in the early days of the garden suburb movement. One of the first sites chosen was off the Finchley Road. The place was in the building, and one of the streets–Laleham Gardens–had only some half a dozen houses in it, all unoccupied save one. It was a lonely, loose end of the suburb, terminating suddenly in open fields. From the unfinished end of the road the ground sloped down somewhat steeply to a pond, and beyond that began a small wood. The one house occupied had been bought by a young married couple named Hepworth.