He put his latch-key into the door with something of a smile; and the next morning Mrs. Clarke cried delightedly to him:
"Well, something must have happened to put you in this good temper!"
At that same hour of the morning Furneaux, for his part, was at Osborne's house in Mayfair, where he had an appointment with Mrs. Hester Bates, Osborne's housekeeper. He was just being admitted into the house when the secretary, Miss Prout, walked up to the door—rather to his surprise, for it was somewhat before the hour of a secretary's attendance. They entered together and passed into the library, where Hylda Prout invited him to sit down for a minute.
"I am only here just to collect and answer the morning's letters," she explained pleasantly. "There's a tree which I know in Epping Forest—an old beech—where I'm taking a book to read. See my picnic basket?—tomato and cress sandwiches, half a bottle of Chianti, an aluminum folding cup to drink from. I'll send for Mrs. Bates in a moment, and leave her to your tender inquiries. But wouldn't you prefer Epping Forest on a day like this? Do you like solitude, Inspector Furneaux? Dreams?"
"Yes, I like solitude, as boys like piracy, because unattainable. I can only just find time to sleep, but not time enough to dream."
Hylda lifted her face beatifically.
"I love to dream!—to be with myself—alone: the world in one compartment, I in another, with myself; with silence to hear my heart beat in, and time to fathom a little what its beating is madly trying to say; an old tree overhead, and breezes breathing through it. Oh, they know how to soothe; they alone understand, Inspector Furneaux, and they forgive."
Furneaux said within himself: "Well, I seem to be in for some charming confidences"; and he added aloud: "Quite so; they understand—if it's a lady: for Nature is feminine; and only a lady can fathom a lady."
"Oh, women!" Hylda said, with her pretty pout of disdain,—"they are nothing, mostly shallow shoppers. Give me a man—if he is a man. And there have been a few women, too—in history. But, man or woman, what I believe is that for the greater part, we remain foreigners to ourselves through life—we never reach that depth in ourselves, 'deeper than ever plummet sounded,' where the real I within us lives, the real, bare-faced, rabid, savage, divine I, naked as an ape, contorted, sobbing, bawling what it cannot speak."
Furneaux, who had certainly not suspected this blend of philosopher and poet beneath that mass of red hair, listened in silence. For the second time he saw this strange girl's eyes take fire, glow, rage a moment like a building sweltering in conflagration, and then die down to utter dullness.