Before Capes could answer her in any way the door at the end of the laboratory opened noisily and Miss Klegg appeared. She went to her own table and sat down. At the sound of the door Ann Veronica uncovered a tearless face, and with one swift movement assumed a conversational attitude. Things hung for a moment in an awkward silence.

“You see,” said Ann Veronica, staring before her at the window-sash, “that’s the form my question takes at the present time.”

Capes had not quite the same power of recovery. He stood with his hands in his pockets looking at Miss Klegg’s back. His face was white. “It’s—it’s a difficult question.” He appeared to be paralyzed by abstruse acoustic calculations. Then, very awkwardly, he took a stool and placed it at the end of Ann Veronica’s table, and sat down. He glanced at Miss Klegg again, and spoke quickly and furtively, with eager eyes on Ann Veronica’s face.

“I had a faint idea once that things were as you say they are, but the affair of the ring—of the unexpected ring—puzzled me. Wish SHE”—he indicated Miss Klegg’s back with a nod—“was at the bottom of the sea.... I would like to talk to you about this—soon. If you don’t think it would be a social outrage, perhaps I might walk with you to your railway station.”

“I will wait,” said Ann Veronica, still not looking at him, “and we will go into Regent’s Park. No—you shall come with me to Waterloo.”

“Right!” he said, and hesitated, and then got up and went into the preparation-room.