his own wit. "Why have you never let me come before?"
"Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell her how I came to know you."
"And what would have been the objection to that?"
"It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate have been that danger."
"Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected.
"She didn't know what I went for."
"Of me then she never even heard?"
"You'll think I was deceitful. But I didn't need to be!"
Stransom was now on the lower doorstep, and his hostess held the door half-closed behind him. Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed face. He made a supreme appeal. "What did he do to you?"
"It would have come out—she would have told you. That fear, at my heart—that was my reason!" And she closed the door, shutting him out.
VIII
He had ruthlessly abandoned her—that, of course, was what he had done. Stransom made it all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched pieces gradually together and dealing one by one
