She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her, and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flashing with intellectual fires)—what more distracting anomaly could the world offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away—Dr. Anna was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.
Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered. Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.
A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr. Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of Dwight Rush.
She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded recognition.
"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were walking to beat time itself—as if you saw a ghost to boot—"
"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the dickens—"
"Were you there when it happened?"
"When what happened?"
"What? You pretend you don't know—when all Elsinore must have known it within five minutes—"