"Have *YOU any right to criticize my actions?"

[ 1577 ] "It will be the talk of the village! My mother was only buried on Saturday, and here you are gadding about with the fellow."

[ 1578 ] "Oh," she shrugged her shoulders, "if it is only village gossip that you mind!"

[ 1579 ] "But it isn't. I've had enough of the fellow hanging about. He's a Polish Jew, anyway."

[ 1580 ] "A tinge of Jewish blood is not a bad thing. It leavens the"-she looked at him-"stolid stupidity of the ordinary Englishman."

[ 1581 ] Fire in her eyes, ice in her voice. I did not wonder that the blood rose to John's face in a crimson tide.

"Mary!"

[ 1582 ] "Well?" Her tone did not change.

[ 1583 ] The pleading died out of his voice.

"Am I to understand that you will continue to see Bauerstein against my express wishes?"

[ 1584 ] "If I choose."

[ 1585 ] "You defy me?"

[ 1586 ] "No, but I deny your right to criticize my actions. Have *YOU no friends of whom I should disapprove?"

John fell back a pace. The colour ebbed slowly from his face.

[ 1587 ] "What do you mean?" he said, in an unsteady voice.

[ 1588 ] "You see!" said Mary quietly. "You *DO see, don't you, that *YOU have no right to dictate to *ME as to the choice of my friends?"

[ 1589 ] John glanced at her pleadingly, a stricken look on his face.

"No right? Have I *NO right, Mary?" he said unsteadily. He stretched out his hands. "Mary--"

[ 1590 ] For a moment, I thought she wavered. A softer expression came over her face, then suddenly she turned almost fiercely away.

[ 1591 ] "None!"

She was walking away when John sprang after her, and caught her by the arm.

[ 1592 ] "Mary"-his voice was very quiet now-"are you in love with this fellow Bauerstein?"

[ 1593 ] She hesitated, and suddenly there swept across her face a strange expression, old as the hills, yet with something eternally young about it. So might some Egyptian sphinx have smiled.

[ 1594 ] She freed herself quietly from his arm, and spoke over her shoulder.

[ 1595 ] "Perhaps," she said; and then swiftly passed out of the little glade, leaving John standing there as though he had been turned to stone.

[ 1596 ] Rather ostentatiously, I stepped forward, crackling some dead branches with my feet as I did so. John turned. Luckily, he took it for granted that I had only just come upon the scene.

[ 1597 ] "Hullo, Hastings. Have you seen the little fellow safely back to his cottage? Quaint little chap! Is he any good, though, really?"

[ 1598 ] "He was considered one of the finest detectives of his day."

[ 1599 ] "Oh, well, I suppose there must be something in it, then. What a rotten world it is, though!"

[ 1600 ] "You find it so?" I asked.

[ 1601 ] "Good Lord, yes! There's this terrible business to start with. Scotland Yard men in and out of the house like a jack-in-the-box! [44] Never know where they won't turn up next. Screaming headlines in every paper in the country-damn all journalists, I say! Do you know there was a whole crowd staring in at the lodge gates this morning. Sort of Madame Tussaud's [45] chamber of horrors business that can be seen for nothing. Pretty thick, isn't it?"

[ 1602 ] "Cheer up, John!" I said soothingly. "It can't last for ever."

[ 1603 ] "Can't it, though? It can last long enough for us never to be able to hold up our heads again."

[ 1604 ] "No, no, you're getting morbid on the subject."

[ 1605 ] "Enough to make a man morbid, to be stalked by beastly journalists and stared at by gaping moon-faced idiots, wherever he goes! But there's worse than that."