It remained remarkable indeed that in her long contact with the partner of her retrospect no accident had lighted a train; but there was no arguing about that; the accident had in fact come: it had simply been that security had prevailed.

She had taken what Hague had given her, and her blankness in respect of his other connexions was only a touch in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had supreme reason to know so great a master could have been trusted to produce.
This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his breath again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom he had had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom Acton Hague, of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned.

Such as she sat there to-day she was ineffaceably stamped with him.

Beneficent, blameless as Stransom held her, he couldn't rid himself of the sense that he had been, as who should say, swindled.

She had imposed upon him hugely, though she had known it as little as he.