"Have you found out anything about the girl in Camden Town?" asked Frank.
"She has disappeared completely," replied the other. "Every clew we have had has led nowhere."
Frank dressed himself with unusual care that afternoon, and, having previously telephoned and secured the girl's permission to call, he presented himself to the minute. She was, as usual, cordiality itself.
"I was rather hurt at your not calling before, Frank," she said. "You have come to congratulate me?"
She looked at him straight in the eyes as she said this.
"You can hardly expect that, May," he said gently, "knowing how much you are to me and how greatly I wanted you. Honestly, I cannot understand it, and I can only suppose that you, whom I love better than anything in the world—and you mean more to me than any other being—share the suspicion which surrounds me like a poison cloud."
"Yet if I shared that suspicion," she said calmly, "would I let you see me? No, Frank, I was a child when—you know. It was only a few months ago, but I believe—indeed I know—it would have been the greatest mistake I could possibly have made. I should have been a very unhappy woman, for I have loved Jasper all along."
She said this evenly, without any display of emotion or embarrassment. Frank, narrating the interview to Saul Arthur Mann, described the speech as almost mechanical.
"I hope you are going to take it nicely," she went on, "that we are going to be such good friends as we always were, and that even the memory of your poor uncle's death and the ghastly trial which followed and the part that Jasper played will not spoil our friendship."