For the first time since the thing began Clara was left out completely. Flora knew she was even left out of a possibility of listening at the keyhole. For the bright, tight, little room into which Harry followed her was approached by a square entry and a double door. The room itself overhung the garden as a ship's deck overhangs the sea. Leather books and long red curtains were the note of it. She and Harry had often been here together before. Harry had made love to her here, and she had found it pleasurable enough. But the fact that she could recall it now with distaste made this familiar surrounding seem strange, and they themselves strangest of all.
He hadn't got his breath. He had hardly shut the door on them before she began. "Well, something has happened." She had his attention. His other purpose was arrested. "Oh, something extraordinary. I would have told you on the spot, only I thought you would rather Clara didn't know it."
"I?" That left him staring. "What have I to do with it?"
At this she gave him a long look. "It was through you he ever had the chance of seeing me. I mean the blue-eyed Chinaman. He has followed me all the evening. He followed me here to the very door." Flora's array of facts fell so fast, so hard, so pointed, that for a moment they held him speechless in the middle of the room.
Any fleeting suspicion she might have had of his complicity in the Chinaman's pursuit vanished. He showed plain bewilderment. For a moment he was more at sea than herself. The next she saw the shadow of a thought so disturbing that it sharpened his ruddy face to harshness. He stepped toward her. "What did he say to you?" He loomed directly above her, threatening.
"Nothing. He didn't say anything. But I know he followed me quite to the house, for I saw his shadow all the way down the hill."
Harry still breathed quickly. "Where—how did he come across you?"
She'd been prepared for that question.
"I was driving down Sutter Street and he saw me at the carriage window."
Harry stood tense, poised, catching everything as she tossed it off; then as if all at once he felt the full weight of the burden, "Lord!" he said, and let himself down heavily into a chair. It was plain in his helpless stare that he knew exactly what it all meant. Laying her hands on the high chair-arms, leaning down so that she could look into his face, Flora made her thrust.