Connie pondered this. Complete intimacy! She supposed that meant revealing everything concerning yourself to the other person, and his revealing everything concerning himself. But that was a bore. And all that weary self–consciousness between a man and a woman! a disease!

‘I think you’re too conscious of yourself all the time, with everybody,’ she said to her sister.

‘I hope at least I haven’t a slave nature,’ said Hilda.

‘But perhaps you have! Perhaps you are a slave to your own idea of yourself.’

Hilda drove in silence for some time after this piece of unheard of insolence from that chit Connie.

‘At least I’m not a slave to somebody else’s idea of me: and the somebody else a servant of my husband’s,’ she retorted at last, in crude anger.

‘You see, it’s not so,’ said Connie calmly.

She had always let herself be dominated by her elder sister. Now, though somewhere inside herself she was weeping, she was free of the dominion of OTHER WOMEN. Ah! that in itself was a relief, like being given another life: to be free of the strange dominion and obsession of OTHER WOMEN. How awful they were, women!

She was glad to be with her father, whose favourite she had always been. She and Hilda stayed stayed in a little hotel off Pall Mall, and Sir Malcolm was in his club. But he took his daughters out in the evening, and they liked going with him.

He was still handsome and robust, though just a little afraid of the new world that had sprung up around him. He had got a second wife in Scotland, younger than himself and richer. But he had as many holidays away from her as possible: just as with his first wife.

Connie sat next to him at the opera. He was moderately stout, and had stout thighs, but they were still strong and well–knit, the thighs of a healthy man who had taken his pleasure in life. His good–humoured selfishness, his dogged sort of independence, his unrepenting sensuality, it seemed to Connie she could see them all in his well–knit straight thighs. Just a man! And now becoming an old man, which is sad. Because in his strong, thick male legs there was none of the alert sensitiveness and power of tenderness which is the very essence of youth, that which never dies, once it is there.

Connie woke up to the existence of legs. They became more important to her than faces, which are no longer very real. How few people had live, alert legs! She looked at the men in the stalls. Great puddingy thighs in black pudding–cloth, or lean wooden sticks in black funeral stuff, or well–shaped young legs without any meaning whatever, either sensuality or tenderness or sensitiveness, just mere leggy ordinariness that pranced around. Not even any sensuality like her father’s. They were all daunted, daunted out of existence.

But the women were not daunted. The awful mill–posts of most females! really shocking, really enough to justify murder! Or the poor thin pegs! or the trim neat things in silk stockings, without the slightest look of life! Awful, the millions of meaningless legs prancing meaninglessly around!

PIERROT.

“Then comes:

“Matter presses. Must withdraw offer unless contract completed. Make appointment by letter. Will confirm by advertisement.

PIERROT.

“Finally:

“Monday night after nine. Two taps. Only ourselves. Do not be so suspicious. Payment in hard cash when goods delivered.

PIERROT.

“A fairly complete record, Watson! If we could only get at the man at the other end!” He sat lost in thought, tapping his fingers on the table. Finally he sprang to his feet.

“Well, perhaps it won’t be so difficult, after all. There is nothing more to be done here, Watson. I think we might drive round to the offices of the Daily Telegraph, and so bring a good day’s work to a conclusion.”

Mycroft Holmes and Lestrade had come round by appointment after breakfast next day and Sherlock Holmes had recounted to them our proceedings of the day before. The professional shook his head over our confessed burglary.

“We can’t do these things in the force, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “No wonder you get results that are beyond us. But some of these days you’ll go too far, and you’ll find yourself and your friend in trouble.”

“For England, home and beauty — eh, Watson? Martyrs on the altar of our country. But what do you think of it, Mycroft?”

“Excellent, Sherlock! Admirable! But what use will you make of it?”

Holmes picked up the Daily Telegraph which lay upon the table.

“Have you seen Pierrot’s advertisement to-day?”

“What? Another one?”

“Yes, here it is:

“To-night. Same hour. Same place. Two taps. Most vitally important. Your own safety at stake.

PIERROT.

“By George!” cried Lestrade. “If he answers that we’ve got him!”

“That was my idea when I put it in. I think if you could both make it convenient to come with us about eight o’clock to Caulfield Gardens we might possibly get a little nearer to a solution.”

One of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts on to lighter things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to advantage. I remember that during the whole of that memorable day he lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus. For my own part I had none of this power of detachment, and the day, in consequence, appeared to be interminable. The great national importance of the issue, the suspense in high quarters, the direct nature of the experiment which we were trying — all combined to work upon my nerve. It was a relief to me when at last, after a light dinner, we set out upon our expedition. Lestrade and Mycroft met us by appointment at the outside of Gloucester Road Station. The area door of Oberstein’s house had been left open the night before, and it was necessary for me, as Mycroft Holmes absolutely and indignantly declined to climb the railings, to pass in and open the hall door. By nine o’clock we were all seated in the study, waiting patiently for our man.