From my pocket I took the document and handed it to her.
"May I ask how you found out who I was, Miss Wallace?"
You might have thought that roses had brushed her cheeks and left their color there.
"I asked a policeman," she confessed, just a little embarrassed.
"To find you a man in a gray ulster, medium height, weight, and complexion," I laughed.
"I had seen you come from the Graymount once or twice, and by describing you to the landlady he discovered who you were and where you worked," she explained.
Her touch of shyness had infected me, too. It was as if unwittingly I had intruded on her private affairs, had seen that morning an incident not meant for the eyes of a stranger. We avoided the common interest between us, though both of us were thinking of it.
Later I was to learn that she had been as eager to approach the subject as I. But she could not very well invite a stranger into her difficulty any more than I could push myself into her confidence.
"I hope you find the paper exactly as you left it, or rather as it left you," I stammered at last.
She had put the map in her hand-bag, but at my words she took it out, not to verify my suggestion but to prolong for a moment her stay in order to find courage to broach the difficulty. For she had come to the office in desperation, determined to confide in me if she liked my face and felt I was to be trusted.