But all at once Wolf thought vividly, sharply, disturbingly of Mr. Malakite.

“I hope I’m not going to overtake him!” he said to himself; and then, before this hope was fully registered in his conscious brain, there in the dimness, standing as if she were waiting for him, was Christie herself!

“I knew your step. I knew the tap of your stick,” she said hurriedly. “I haven’t been here very long. Father came back and told me he’d had tea with you and then went off to get supper in the town; for he knew I hadn’t anything for him in the house.”

She spoke hurriedly, but quite calmly; and all the while she was speaking, she held one of Wolf’s hands tightly with one of her own, and kept rubbing his knuckles with her other hand, as if she were rubbing out some stain left by Time itself, some imprint which the days that had passed since they had last seen each other had left there.