Part 5 (1/2)

The whole mystery stood explained.

”Absolutely!” he said.

And felt the skin creeping in the small of his back.

CHAPTER III

_The Photograph_

From the moment of Mrs. Challice's remarks in favour of matrimonial agencies Priam Farll's existence became a torture to him. She was what he had always been accustomed to think of as ”a very decent woman”; but really...! The sentence is not finished because Priam never finished it in his own mind. Fifty times he conducted the sentence as far as 'really,' and there it dissolved into an uncomfortable cloud.

”I suppose we shall have to be going,” said she, when her ice had been eaten and his had melted.

”Yes,” said he, and added to himself, ”But where?”

However, it would be a relief to get out of the restaurant, and he called for the bill.

While they were waiting for the bill the situation grew more strained.

Priam was aware of a desire to fling down sovereigns on the table and rush wildly away. Even Mrs. Challice, vaguely feeling this, had a difficulty in conversing.

”You _are_ like your photograph!” she remarked, glancing at his face which--it should be said--had very much changed within half-an-hour. He had a face capable of a hundred expressions per day. His present expression was one of his anxious expressions, medium in degree. It can be figured in the mask of a person who is locked up in an iron strongroom, and, feeling ill at ease, notices that the walls are getting red-hot at the corners.

”Like my photograph?” he exclaimed, astonished that he should resemble Leek's photograph.

”Yes,” she a.s.severated stoutly. ”I knew you at once. Especially by the nose.”

”Have you got it here?” he asked, interested to see what portrait of Leek had a nose like his own.

And she pulled out of her handbag a photograph, not of Leek, but of Priam Farll. It was an unmounted print of a negative which he and Leek had taken together for the purposes of a pose in a picture, and it had decidedly a distinguished appearance. But why should Leek dispatch photographs of his master to strange ladies introduced through a matrimonial agency? Priam Farll could not imagine--unless it was from sheer unscrupulous, careless bounce.

She gazed at the portrait with obvious joy.

”Now, candidly, don't _you_ think it's very, very good?” she demanded.

”I suppose it is,” he agreed. He would probably have given two hundred pounds for the courage to explain to her in a few well-chosen words that there had been a vast mistake, a huge impulsive indiscretion. But two hundred thousand pounds would not have bought that courage.

”I love it,” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently--with heat, and yet so nicely! And she returned the photograph to her little bag.

She lowered her voice.

”You haven't told me whether you were ever married. I've been waiting for that.”

He blushed. She was disconcertingly personal.

”No,” he said.

”And you've always lived like that, alone like; no home; travelling about; no one to look after you, properly?” There was distress in her voice.