The pleasant old lady had appeared in the doorway. She curtseyed with a smile to Mr. Holmes, but glanced with some apprehension at the figure upon the sofa.

“It is all right, Martha. He has not been hurt at all.”

“I am glad of that, Mr. Holmes. According to his lights he has been a kind master. He wanted me to go with his wife to Germany yesterday, but that would hardly have suited your plans, would it, sir?”

“No, indeed, Martha. So long as you were here I was easy in my mind. We waited some time for your signal to-night.”

“It was the secretary, sir.”

“I know. His car passed ours.”

“I thought he would never go. I knew that it would not suit your plans, sir, to find him here.”

“No, indeed. Well, it only meant that we waited half an hour or so until I saw your lamp go out and knew that the coast was clear. You can report to me to-morrow in London, Martha, at Claridge’s Hotel.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I suppose you have everything ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir. He posted seven letters to-day. I have the addresses as usual.”

“Very good, Martha. I will look into them to-morrow. Goodnight. These papers,” he continued as the old lady vanished, “are not of very great importance, for, of course, the information which they represent has been sent off off long ago to the German government. These are the originals which could not safely be got out of the country.”

“Then they are of no use.”

“I should not go so far as to say that, Watson. They will at least show our people what is known and what is not. I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished. But you, Watson” — he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders — “I’ve hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever. ”

“I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes — you have changed very little — save for that horrible goatee.”

“These are the sacrifices one makes for one’s country, Watson,” said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. “To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge’s tomorrow as I was before this American stunt — I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled — before this American job came my way.”

“But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.”

“Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!” He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. “Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.”

Clifford, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Connie for giving up her personal care of him to a strange hired woman. It killed, he said to himself, the real flower of the intimacy between him and her. But Connie didn’t mind that. The fine flower of their intimacy was to her rather like an orchid, a bulb stuck parasitic on her tree of life, and producing, to her eyes, a rather shabby flower.

Now she had more time to herself she could softly play the piano, up in her room, and sing: ‘Touch not the nettle, for the bonds of love are ill to loose.’ She had not realized till lately how ill to loose they were, these bonds of love. But thank Heaven she had loosened them! She was so glad to be alone, not always to have to talk to him. When he was alone he tapped–tapped–tapped on a typewriter, to infinity. But when he was not ‘working’, and she was there, he talked, always talked; infinite small analysis of people and motives, and results, characters and personalities, till now she had had enough. For years she had loved it, until she had enough, and then suddenly it was too much. She was thankful to be alone.

It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear. But the bonds of such love are more ill to loose even than most bonds; though Mrs Bolton’s coming had been a great help.

But he still wanted the old intimate evenings of talk with Connie: talk or reading aloud. But now she could arrange that Mrs Bolton should come at ten to disturb them. At ten o’clock Connie could go upstairs and be alone. Clifford was in good hands with Mrs Bolton.

Mrs Bolton ate with Mrs Betts in the housekeeper’s room, since they were all agreeable. And it was curious how much closer the servants’ quarters seemed to have come; right up to the doors of Clifford’s study, when before they were so remote. For Mrs Betts would sometimes sit in Mrs Bolton’s room, and Connie heard their lowered voices, and felt somehow the strong, other vibration of the working people almost invading the sitting–room, when she and Clifford were alone. So changed was Wragby merely by Mrs Bolton’s coming.

And Connie felt herself released, in another world, she felt she breathed differently. But still she was afraid of how many of her roots, perhaps mortal ones, were tangled with Clifford’s. Yet still, she breathed freer, a new phase was going to begin in her life.

Mrs Bolton also kept a cherishing eye on Connie, feeling she must extend to her her female and professional protection. She was always urging her ladyship to walk out, to drive to Uthwaite, to be in the air. For Connie had got into the habit of sitting still by the fire, pretending to read; or to sew feebly, and hardly going out at all.